Sunday, January 9, 2011
Two Sicknesses On Display in Arizona
The shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of several people by gunman Jared Loughner in Arizona yesterday has revealed two sicknesses.
The first and most serious is the sickness living in Loughner's head. Evidence in the form of farewell videos, internet postings, and the recollections of people who knew him reveal a profoundly disturbed person who had veered far into a paranoid world. Loughner's complaints about government mind control and other rants were not "anti-government" in any political sense, but anti-government or anarchist in the Ted Kazynski-deranged sense. We do not know Loughner's motives, but those motives whatever they were were the byproduct of Loughner's clearly delusional view of the world.
There also was a second sickness on display, and it was the swiftness and the vigor with which the left-wing blogosphere and some more mainstream Democrats immediately sought to blame Sarah Palin and right-wing "vitriol" in general for the shooting.
Within minutes of the shooting being made known, two of the highest profile left-wing bloggers, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos and Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress, pulled out a 10-month-old electoral map used at a Sarah Palin website showing almost two dozen congressional districts being targeted, including Giffords' district. The map was similar to one used by the Democratic Leadership Committee to target Republicans in the prior election cycle, and as Howard Kurtzpoints out, simply typical of campaign rhetoric using military-themed language.
There also was a second sickness on display, and it was the swiftness and the vigor with which the left-wing blogosphere and some more mainstream Democrats immediately sought to blame Sarah Palin and right-wing "vitriol" in general for the shooting.
Within minutes of the shooting being made known, two of the highest profile left-wing bloggers, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos and Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress, pulled out a 10-month-old electoral map used at a Sarah Palin website showing almost two dozen congressional districts being targeted, including Giffords' district. The map was similar to one used by the Democratic Leadership Committee to target Republicans in the prior election cycle, and as Howard Kurtzpoints out, simply typical of campaign rhetoric using military-themed language.
[read William A. Jacobson's insightful analysis of the sad story made sadder at the above link]
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