Patriotically Murdering Patroits, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #204
January 10, 2011 Mike Gold 0 Comments
We have been told Jared Loughner is a “pot smoking loner.” So the right-wing is blaming Saturday’s terrorism on marijuana? Really? I thought they were better than that. Besides, I know several conservatives who were pot smoking loners, and only one of them ever tried to kill someone. In his case, that someone was himself.
And, evidently, this particular loner had at least one friend.
The issue isn’t the politics of the shooter or the propensity for “lone crazed madmen” to shoot politicians, it’s how as a matter of political discourse we have been encouraging violent and lethal rhetoric. Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, and countless right-wing politicians have promoted this type of imagery in order to spread their message of hate.
These days left-wingers tend not to go about advocating lethal violence (note: I said these days, not 40 years ago or the late 19th century). Palin, Limbaugh, Beck and their ilk do. In the 21st century, it’s the right-wing thing to do. We’ve got a lot of one- and two-man militias out there – remember Oklahoma City? – and some of them are indeed lone crazed madmen. The more they receive encouragement, the more people are going to get killed – even moderates, as yesterday’s shooting tells us.
That gun-sight map of Sarah Palin’s has received a lot of exposure over the past 48 hours. Palin aide Rebecca Mansour told a radio program “We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you’d see on maps… There was nothing irresponsible about the image, and to draw a line connecting Palin and Saturday’s shooting is obscene and appalling… I never went out and blamed Al Gore or any environmentalist for the crazy insane person who went to shoot up the Discovery Channel.” Then she went on to declare Jared Loughner a liberal. “It seems that he people that knew him said that he was left-wing and very liberal.”
What I don’t get is why the rabid-right doesn’t understand that video tape and digital recording actually works. Sarah Palin is on the record as calling the cross-hairs as “bull’s-eyes.” We already knew Sarah Palin and her Tea Baggers were insane and very stupid. I just wish they’d stop being so prissy. It’s bad art.
Let’s play a game. Let’s say the target was Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer. How do you think the right would have responded?
“Terrorism from the left. Kill the terrorists.”
O.K. Now let’s say the shooter was Muslim. How do you think the right would have responded?
“Terrorism from Arabia. Kill the terrorists.”
I just can’t shake that hinky feeling that this is the start of something. It’s the way movements usually start: rouse the rabble. Nothing specific planned, just let well-stoked hatred take its course. It works for Al Qaeda, it worked for the National Socialist German Workers‘ Party, and it works for the Tea Baggers. I am truly afraid of the domino effect. My heart goes out to the many victims, and my heart also goes out to the United States of America. Those who have been so public about trying to “restore America to its roots” are succeeding.
I find myself referring to George Santayana just about every day now.
Wag, media wonk and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on America’s pop culture channel The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his truly offensive Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants are unleashed each and every day at the same venue.
Mike Gold
January 11, 2011 - 11:18 am
Ahhhh… Gacy was a clown.
Really. Honest. No kidding. And one of his clown portraits was on exhibit at my wedding. Really. Honest. No kidding.
Reg
January 11, 2011 - 11:57 am
@ Mike G…Ummmm. Wow. Talk about degrees of separation.
@ Mike W. Touche! 😀
But realizing that your tongue was firmly planted in cheek in that response, I will say that while Palin’s VP nod was a Hail Mary (FAIL) lob by McCain, since then the GOP has used Palin’s ‘cachet’ to profitable effect to replenish their coffers and galvanize the fringe elements. So yeah, prior to her 15 minutes winding down she’s definitely had deep pocket handlers who have shaped some of the ‘messages’ that she’s put forth.
And unlike Ms. P…they’ve been in the orchestra pit for a minute and know the chords they want to play.
Mike Gold
January 11, 2011 - 12:11 pm
Word has it that Ms. Palin has lowered her $$$ demand in an attempt to keep her reality show on the air.
“Palin” + “Reality” = “The Funny.”
Mike Gold
January 11, 2011 - 2:11 pm
In the interest of fair play, I’ll toss this one to Russ.
Last year, former Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) said “That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida… Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he’s running for governor of Florida. He’s a millionaire and a billionaire. He’s no hero. He’s a damn crook. It’s just we don’t prosecute big crooks.”
Yesterday, Kanjorski in a New York Times op-ed called for “civility and respect” in American political discourse.
Now I’ll throw Martha one.
I read all about this in the oh-so-liberal Talking Points Memo.
For the record, Kanjorski lost in his reelection bid (after eight terms; his clock ran out) and Scott is now the Governor of Florida.
R. Maheras
January 11, 2011 - 2:47 pm
Reg wrote: “Come on now, Russ…you’re mixing apples and oranges again. Gacy’s murders had absolutely no political associations.”
The difference between you/Martha, and I, is that I don’t differentiate between crazy “politically” and crazy any other way. Someone who’s crazy is simply crazy, and how they channel their craziness is immaterial. In Gacy’s case, I think he could have easily have ended up a politically-motivated, bomb-throwing loon under a not-too-different set of circumstances.
But let’s ignore the above just for a moment and look at Martha’s list. Is there any causal relationship between that list and, say, Palin? For example, do you think the Hutaree — which was founded before Palin was even a twinkle in the eye of the national media — give a flying hoot about what Sarah Palin says? After all, according to their own charter, Palin was/is part of “the system” and thus is considered to be one of their enemies.
And correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t white supremacist organizations pre-date Glenn Beck by, oh… I don’t know… around a few centuries?
So you see, all this fear-mongering about the left’s favorite targets falls apart under closer scrutiny. Such finger-pointing merely distracts from what we should be talking about: real political issues.
R. Maheras
January 11, 2011 - 3:16 pm
Mike wrote: “Gacy was a clown.”
Yeah… creepy, eh?
But I guess that’s how such predators work. I remember when I was in the Boy Scouts, one of our assistant leaders was a quiet, thirty-something bachelor photographer with no kids in the troop. I always felt a bit uneasy around him — especially when, on camping trips, he would pop out his camera and snap some photos of the boys.
But back in those days, no one questioned aloud such things. I was in my late teens by that time anyway, and while I kept my distance from him, I always figured if he tried anything, I probably could take him in a knock-down brawl.
In any case, about 10 years later, after I’d joined the Air Force, married, and was off living in Japan, my mom sent me one of her periodic “care” packages with the usual news clippings from back home. Amongst them once was a couple featuring said photographer, who had just been arrested by the Chicago Police. It seems that, on a tip, the cops raided his house and found thousands of photos of young boys, many fully or partially nude.
Like the old saying goes, robbers steal from banks because that’s where the money is, and predators of various ilk apparently follow a similar strategy.
And yep… that photographer was probably a Democrat.
Bill Mulligan
January 11, 2011 - 3:19 pm
Martha, I don’t want to go through each of your examples, many of which are probably valid but a couple do jump out as questionable-
1- I think it’s really clutching at straws to claim we know the political affiliations of an “unidentified white male”
2- Joseph Ray Stack sure had a gripe against the IRS but that hardly makes him a conservative. read his manifesto–he rails against the Catholic Church, Enron, the health care system, how “when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes”, “The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies”,how “blacks and poor immigrants” are “dying for their freedom in this country” and ended it with “The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.” I don’t think this guy would be a huge hit at a Tea Party Rally. A lot of his stuff sounds like left wing boilerplate (when you get to the real extremes you can look from pig to man and not be able to tell the differences). Incidentally Noam Chomsky himself had some sympathy with Stack’s plight, a man pushed to insanity by what Chomsky sees as “institutional crimes of state capitalism.”
3- John Patrick Bedell was recently institutionalized bipolar pot-obsessed registered Democrat and a follower of the 9/11 truther movement (the one who think GW Bush orchestrated 9/11). he wanted to replace current currency with one based on a gram of pot. Oh yeah, great GOP material there.
4- James Von Brunn was also a 9/11 truther and an critic of the Iraq war.
How accurate would it be to numbers 3 & 4 (possible #2 as well) as examples of how the large number of democrats who doubt the official story of 9/11 are encouraging lunatics to take violent action?
I say, if a person wants to overthrow the elected government of the United States by any means other than the ballot box, they are no longer on the liberal–conservative spectrum. They are in their own little group and the niggling details matter less than what they all have in common. But of course, it’s always easy to play the guilt by association card.
Martha Thomases
January 11, 2011 - 3:27 pm
@Russ: I didn’t say that Sarah Palin was the cause/inspiration. I said violent right ring rhetoric played a part. Apples and oranges.
@Bill: I didn’t say that these people weren’t crazy. I said that responsible leaders should denounce the crazy folks. Show me where that happened.
Mike Gold
January 11, 2011 - 3:52 pm
Martha, “responsible leaders” (which may be an oxymoron) can rarely denounce the crazies lest they be accused of hypocrisy. When you’re trying to change the world, you say and sometimes do a lot of crazy shit. Just ask Bill Ayers.
Bill said “if a person wants to overthrow the elected government of the United States by any means other than the ballot box, they are no longer on the liberal–conservative spectrum. They are in their own little group and the niggling details matter less than what they all have in common.” That’s an interesting thought, and I’ve got to think on it some. Certainly Palin and her Tea Baggers (as opposed to other people’s tea baggers; so much for a leaderless movement) would disagree with that thought, as they keep on quoting (usually misquoting) Thomas Jefferson’s line about the need for revolution. I like his comment in context, in his letter to Abigail Adams in 1787: “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.”
A year later, Jefferson said something that might be more to the liking of the Tea Baggers, and one to which they and I could possibly agree: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
Bill also said “But of course, it’s always easy to play the guilt by association card.” No, it’s not, Bill. Sometimes it takes a tremendous amount of effort.
Martha Thomases
January 11, 2011 - 3:57 pm
@Mike: Bill was pretty much denounced by all sides, at least over the last few decades. And, if one reads what he wrote about his actions, one notes that he went to extraordinary lengths to be sure that no people were harmed, just property.
(And I say “just property” because it wasn’t mine.)
Mike Gold
January 11, 2011 - 4:11 pm
Yeah, I read Bill’s stuff and I concur with both your statements. I knew him back in the day, although I knew a few others in the Weather Underground better. I particularly liked Antioch College’s own Jeff Jones, and I admire his recent work on the environment scene. I was pretty close to Bernadine Dohrn as well — Bill’s wife — 40+ years ago.
But I’m certainly not bragging. The Days of Rage was one of the most childish and pointless events of the era and while the collective IQs of the Weather Underground collective undoubtedly (in my mind) exceeded that of the entire Tea Baggers, the really pulled some truly stupid shit. And I’m not saying that in hindsight; I said so to their faces at the time. Ted Gold, no relation, hated me for that until the day he died.
In the Greenwich Village townhouse.
R. Maheras
January 11, 2011 - 5:24 pm
Martha wrote: “@Russ: I didn’t say that Sarah Palin was the cause/inspiration. I said violent right ring rhetoric played a part. Apples and oranges.”
Palin has been directly blamed for the tragedy by those on the left who say she engaged in “violent right wing rhetoric.” If you are not one of those who also advocated that, then I apologize.
That said, I think the whole argument about Palin’s alleged “violent right wing rhetoric” is hogwash. She’s no more advocated the violent overthrown of government than you have.
What I find remarkable about Palin-haters is they blame her for damn near every U.S. woe imagineable, despite the fact that Palin has yet to serve for one minute as an elected or appointed official in the federal government. The whole frenzy around Palin almost seems like a noisy diversion to keep the focus from the folks who are really responsible for the lion’s share of the mess we are in: The folks who are actually IN Washington.
Palin is nothing more than a sideshow, especially since, as I said before, I think she’s unelectable as president. But even if, by some miracle, she DOES end up in some federal position some day (even as president), there’s no way in hell she can do any worse than what we’ve seen from both parties in the past decade.
Bill Mulligan
January 11, 2011 - 6:28 pm
Mike says–That’s an interesting thought, and I’ve got to think on it some.
NOW I’m in trouble! 🙂
Well, Einstein said space is curved and a straight line will eventually meet itself (editors note–I have no idea if any of that is accurate but humor me) so it stands to reason that the far left and far right will eventually meet and discover Hey! we BOTH hate Jews!
I assumed that when Tea Partiers were talking about “second amendment solutions” it was only if the government were to prevent us from exercising our right to peaceful change through the ballot box. Basically the same as “No Justice, No Peace!” as promoted by Al Sharpton. There’s an implied threat in both but there’s enough plausible deniability that both are legitimate in political discourse.
Or were. Here’s a thought; given that a politician should now be 100% aware that any potentially inflammatory language they use can and will be used against them should some tragedy occur, anyone who still employs such language in the future may be too stupid and reckless for the job.
Reg
January 11, 2011 - 9:03 pm
Russ, let me first state that many aspects of my personal ideology would certainly be considered conservative (yea, even fundamental) by the majority of readers of MDW, and just as many would be considered liberal. I try to walk in balance like my Rabboni. His is the Pattern that I strive to follow. So please don’t see my rebuttals as an attack on your position…I’m just pointing out what seems to me to be clear representations of overtly negative characteristics that emanate from what’s deemed as the ‘Right’.
You said..”The difference between you/Martha, and I, is that I don’t differentiate between crazy “politically” and crazy any other way. Someone who’s crazy is simply crazy, and how they channel their craziness is immaterial.”
That’s a very valid statement. However, are you opposed to holding ‘responsible’ entities liable if use unsafe behavior influencers which serve to ignite mental illnesses into destructive behavior?
“Is there any causal relationship between that list and, say, Palin?”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/14/politics/main6484410.shtml
Why yes… I believe there is…as indicated by the following:
‘Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said during a speech Friday that President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies would ban guns and ammunition if they could get away with it.
The former Alaska governor said in a speech to the National Rifle Association that political backlash is the only thing stopping Obama from gutting the Constitution’s right to bear arms. Palin said the public needs to stop Democrats in their tracks, starting with the November elections. Palin praised the anti-tax tea party movement as a grassroots effort “to get government back on our side.’
Don’t you think that throwing out pretty blatant untruths and loaded commentary would have a profound effect on the type of rabid gun lovers that are far and aware more aligned with the conservative party?
What about the following?
‘She said Obama is “the most pro-abortion president ever to occupy the White House” and asserted that the historic health care reform law would fund abortions.’
Never mind the fact that the health bill would not allow for federal dollars to pay for elective abortions. As I stated in another of Mike’s columns, I (as an admitted testicle holder) am adamantly opposed to abortions. I believe that the gift of human life is precious beyond measure or comprehension. Which also means that I am just as adamantly opposed to any violent act perpetrated against abortion providers.
So surely you’ll agree that Ms. P’s misrepresentations above would serve to get the dander up of certain folks who fail to grasp the disconnect between what they seek to protect and the acts of evil they use in regards to this issue? And would you also agree that they most often line up on the ‘red’ side?
“And correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t white supremacist organizations pre-date Glenn Beck by, oh… I don’t know… around a few centuries?”
Well in terms of what side of the political spectrum that white supremacists routinely line up on…surely there’s no difficulty in finding that answer?
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399921,00.html
Hopefully you’ll agree that the links I’ve provided are from sources that can’t be easily cast into the ‘Liberal Blog’ arena.
Unfortunately, as much as I desire that sanity would be the order of the day in the followers of both ideologies, what I said above holds true…If the ugly shoes fit, you’ve got to wear ’em…or else choose another style.
Bill Mulligan
January 12, 2011 - 8:41 am
Mike, mulling this over a bit more:
Look at Charlie Manson. If one wished to you could make the argument that this guy is a ‘left wing mass murderer”. A bunch of free love hippies, into drugs and music and casual sex, wanting to overthrow The man, blah blah blah.
It would be a fundamentally dishonest argument but so is immediately equating “racist white man with gun” = “conservative”. Yet that is pretty much what folks who make things like the list Martha shared do. It would be equally dishonest to assume that every or even most crimes involving a Black criminal and a White victim are examples of liberal violence.
Manson, the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Klan, ELF, the various White Supremacy groups, these people are all off the chart and do not deserve comparison with the legitimate political schools of thought that, while they may oppose each other harshly, are working for what they believe to be best for the country in a sane, legal, morally justifiable way. Yes, the extremists will sometimes be on the ‘right” side of things (“right” meaning they agree with ones own opinion) but that is no reflection on the issue itself. The fact that Jim Jones was strongly in favor of integration is no reflection on immigration.
Quick–Jim Jones! Liberal nut or conservative nut? Does it matter? Is it even a logical question? (Answer–he was so far left he went right off the graph. If any liberals deserve blame it’s the ones who continued to speak up for him long after it should have been obvious that he was a nutter but even they could not have foreseen where this was going to end up.)
Mike Gold
January 12, 2011 - 8:53 am
Bill, whereas I can nitpick (and I really enjoy that), I agree with the essence of what you say. Words like “left” should not be uttered by the right. Words like “right” should not be uttered by the left. That’s because the right takes offense at the left’s definition of right and the left takes offense at the right’s definition of left. That’s because we use those words, and words like them, as bullets for our guns.
Which was pretty much the point of my asking (and many, many others) that we take another look at our rhetoric.
This always starts a childishly defensive “you started it! Jus’ sayin’!” dialog. Woof.
But Sarah Palin really sucks.
Reg
January 12, 2011 - 10:52 am
Apparently my earlier reply to Russ is still awaiting mod approval so I won’t repost, but I found the following commentary from psychologist and neuroscientist Drew Westen pretty much addresses everything that’s being bandied about from a clinical perspective.
“As a psychologist, I find it remarkable that we’re having this discussion at all, especially in light of both the weight scientists put on prediction – Gabby Giffords’ own interview at the Capitol during the election when she warned that Palin putting people like her in the crosshairs has “consequences”— and what we know about what neuroscientists call priming, the influence of a prior stimulus on a later reaction, usually unconsciously.
Do we really believe that physician George Tiller’s assassination by a radical Christian jihadist was totally random, casually unrelated to Bill O’Reilly’s constant reference to “Tiller the Killer”? The terrorist who killed Dr. Tiller had over 300 million other targets and chose this one. That should have prompted congressional hearings on incitement or perhaps even a Justice Department investigation.
Did O’Reilly kill Tiller? No. Did he explicitly or implicitly egg on the killer? Yes. It doesn’t matter that the shooter might need to be a radical religious fanatic, a technically sane but paranoid-leaning right-wing authoritarian personality (a well-studied construct), or someone who is clearly psychotic (as in Loughner’s case).
If you create a culture of hate, replete with people brandishing weapons at political events, as they did last summer and are permitted to do in Arizona, eventually one of the 300 million people in this country will be influenced by your words to act. Did Palin literally mean to imply with her crosshairs that someone should kill Gabby Giffords? I don’t know her mind, nor what she consciously intended (which I am sure was metaphorical, not a call to action) and what she unconsciously intended (which none of us knows).
But the entire culture of the right has become a culture of vitriol that includes the idea of using bullets if ballots fail, and it is not equivalent to Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow pointing that out and attacking that for its dangerousness — a false symmetry perpetrated by the media attempting to be “fair and balanced.”
Our political culture now countenances paranoid personalities with low IQs, poor self-restraint, and absolute conviction in their ideas — and in the evil of those who disagree with them — to “lock and load” on their way to Congress, whether as a member or as a bully with a guy outside town hall meetings. And our media no longer call them out for either being unstable or ignorant.
That is the context in which a member of Congress is now in intensive care with certain survival but uncertain quality of life. Sarah Palin is only the tip of an iceberg, and you can see fanaticism and fascism from her porch.”
Bill Mulligan
January 12, 2011 - 11:26 am
Seriously? O’reilly should have been investigated by the Justice Department?
Suppose GW Bush had been shot by some nut. Would you be ok with investigations of each and every person who contributed to the climate of hate?
People are setting themselves up for one hell of a potential unintended consequence. When you give government the ability to regulate or punish speech it’s always with the idea that they will go after those other people and everything will be rainbows and Snickers bars, forgetting that governments change and unless you are very old or lucky enough to be hit by a schoolbus tomorrow you will undoubtedly live long enough to see several presidencies and congressional control by those very same others. And now THEY can go after what you say! A fine kettle of fish you’re going to be in then.
Is it impossible to believe that George Tiller could have been killed without Bill O’reilly? Well, yeah. He was first mentioned on the show in 2005. By then Dr. Tiller has already survived an assassination attempt that nearly succeeded when some crazed woman shot him 5 times. Tiller was a target long before he came to O’Reilly’s attention.
It’s tempting to try to use these terrible events to score points but we can’t start legislating offensive speech or it will backfire. It will.
Certainly one can point out inflammatory speech and shun those who engage in it. To do so effectively it would be wise to make sure your own house is in order and–and this may be hardest–be on the record condemning those on your own side who cross the line. Most people have a real hard time with that one.
R. Maheras
January 12, 2011 - 12:08 pm
Reg — Some people on the left are attempting to use a random act of violence by a certifiable loon as evidence that their political adversaries are fomenting violence.
Do you think that is ethical and just?
I sure as hell don’t.
If people have to twist facts, trump-up accusations, or use hyperbole to attack their perceived evils of their political enemies, then you know what? Those people just might be totally barking up the wrong tree.
Reg
January 12, 2011 - 2:40 pm
Russ – I respect what you have to say, but as serendipity would have it, I just came across the following.
Black GOP Official Resigns, Citing Arizona Tea Party Threats
According to the Arizona Republic – ‘The sole black Republican Party district chairman in Arizona resigned from his post in the wake of Saturday’s shooting, citing threats from the Tea Party faction and concerns for his family’s safety…Miller had been an especially dedicated campaigner for the GOP, and said he only stepped down in the face of “constant verbal attacks” and other forms of intimidation.’
‘The party became fractured between Miller supporters and a “small but vocal group” of detractors who frequently targeted Miller in emails, Kolb said. “I’ve never understood why they had this hatred for him,” Kolb said of Miller’s opponents. “I guess there were some people who thought that since he’d worked for McCain he wasn’t conservative enough.’
You can’t make this stuff up… Sigh.
MOTU
January 12, 2011 - 2:49 pm
Reg wrote:
“Black GOP Official Resigns, Citing Arizona Tea Party Threats”
WTF? Are we Mexico now!?
Reg
January 12, 2011 - 2:58 pm
Bill said – “It’s tempting to try to use these terrible events to score points but we can’t start legislating offensive speech or it will backfire. It will.”
I totally agree that the right to freedom of speech for the individual is and should remain one of the hallmarks of this great nation. And it would be a slippery slope indeed to weaken that right.
But just as there are punitive laws again libel and slander, so are there laws against the inciting of violence. I’m of the belief that if you use your platform to influence a scope of other individuals thru the constant use of inflammatory rhetoric and a causal link can be established between the use of said rhetoric and any violent act perpetrated against another citizen, then….
Reg
January 12, 2011 - 3:05 pm
The mOTu wrote:
‘Black GOP Official Resigns, Citing Arizona Tea Party Threats’
“WTF? Are we Mexico now!?”
Not looking good is it, sir?