There are many conservatives this week accusing liberals of jumping to conclusions about the Arizona shooter, whether or not this murderer was influenced by rightwing hate. They say it's not fair to blame people on the right. They say how can there be a connection when this man was infatuated with Hitler, hell he was a pot smoking lefty....according to classmates....they say.
Remember, it's the conservatives, the tea party, who are showing such disdain for our government, they are the party spewing the anti government rhetoric (just like the shooter), it is their tea party princess with the cross hair decorated map targeting Democratic Congressmen and women, it is their precious patriotic tea party members showing up at rallies with guns strapped to their legs, and holding signs that show guns with violent wording, it's conservative candidates running for office who offer a chance to shoot a gun with them, it's not the liberal candidates doing that...
Remember the HC bill vote, our Republican members of Congress stood on the balcony of the people's House holding the Don't Tread on Me flag, practically inciting a riot, whipping the teabaggers into a frenzy with their hate speeches! Oh but that's good and fine because first amendment rights and all that.....
Remember Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his stance against the government, threatening secession because of taxation, spending, and debt? Oh yea he loved firing up those teabaggers at the big Texas rallies.
And the patriotic conservative Chuck Norris who said he might run for president of Texas....
I may run for president of Texas he said, “That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone
someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if
the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.”
The actor claimed “thousands of cell groups will be united around the
country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation” and said that
if states decide to secede from the union, that Texas would lead the
way.
“Anyone who has been around Texas for any length of time knows
exactly what we'd do if the going got rough in America".
Remember rightwing hysteria during the HC debates, the town halls where seniors would stand up and scream "Keep your hands off my Medicare!" The death panel lies, this sort of fearmongering turns ordinary civil citizens into raving maniacs. Beck, Limbaugh, Palin..all guilty of stirring up fear and hysteria. This is what could turn a mentally ill person into a murderer. Far fetched you say? If a person targets a political figure, then most likely they are mad at government, right? So take rightwing radio hosts talking dirt on our president and the Democrats in Congress, the liberal agenda they call socialism, Fox news lies, and you have an ill person soaking it all up, taking it all in and believing....
So see, these few examples of rightwing hysteria are just the sort of thing that can take a mentally unstable person and turn him into a murder. I don't say rightwing fearmongering was a motive for the murderous rampage, I say these examples of hysterical anti-government revolt seep into the brains of the mentally ill and become truth even when it's nowhere near the truth.
3 hours ago
40 comments:
I see your point on the hate mongering so prevalent in politics today Sue and I agree that the right wing seems to pick up the nut jobs and broadcasters love to see that. I know I do. It makes for a good story. The sad truth is that we have it on both sides of the aisle and our folks (Liberals) are not inoculated against bat shit looney people.
We as a people need to end the hate and bashing of one another and end the us vs. them mentality. America needs to move to the center where a larger and larger portion of voters are going, myself included.
I love your passion in this post though sis. It rocks on the idiocy of lone gunmen. People should make their opinion known at the ballot box and not take matters into their own hands.
Mat I have said it, the left has had it's problems with extremists. We admit to it, the right has a really hard time admitting to theirs though so we have to point these things out to them...:-)
Sue, you commented on the previous thread that "I don't believe any liberals are saying that the motive for the shootings was right-wing hate talk." This and, yet, the very title of the post itself was "Evil Marches On.....Right-wing media is to blame." You seem to be giving out some very mixed signals here.
also let me say Mat, the examples I stated here are exclusive to conservatives, they own all this baggage.
MOTIVE is different then hate talk getting in a mentally ill persons head making him believe a certain way. I don't believe that means it's a motive to kill. I'm not making sense.
When a mentally ill person hears anti government hate talk over and over it could eventually cause him to lash out at government leaders. A sick person doesn't need a motive to kill.
Yes, Shaw, you're right. The right evidently did doctor that Daily Kos graphic (this, though, yes, the Kos DID use the term, bulls eye). But if you're thinking that this left-wing site is significantly less vile than, say, Mr. Limbaugh (who I've readily admitted is a divisive douche), you might want to try and read it some time. It's pretty damn frigging bad, from my perspective.
FOR THE LAST TIME, Sue. Tea Party people (the vast majority) love government and our country. What they don't like is the path that it is taking with the current huge government/nanny state tendencies. Tea Party patriots want responsible government, smaller more fiscally conservative government and lower taxes. That hardly makes them crazed government hating zealots. Why is it that those whose political views are different from yours are so dangerous in your mind? Please watch film footage of Tea Party Rallys...they are everyday Americans with jobs and families and lives not very much different from your own. They simply want government to do what it is supposed to do according to the Constitution and to stop working against our economy and our freedoms. If you don't see the relevancy of that last sentence, then I have no more to say. (Is that gleeful cheering I hear?)
that is total bullshit Linda. The tea party was not in existance when Clinton and Bush were in office, or if they were they were mighty silent. It was GW Bushes policies that should have woken those baggers, BUT NO, just since our Democratic black president have they come out in the sunlight. I have listened to what those people say when they are questioned at the rallies about why they are there and what they are protesting, they ramble on til they come up with a Glenn Beck talking point, and thats the damn truth.
Do you think it was common in the past for one party of Congressmen to stand in revolt of the other party on the Capitol steps holding a Don't Tread on Me flag and saying horrible disparaging things about our president and elected leaders to rile up a group of protestors?
Bush and Clinton weren't trying to "fundamntally" transform the country either.
LISA: "Bush and Clinton weren't trying to "fundamntally" transform the country either."
This unthinking parroting of rightwing talking points will get us nowhere.
That bit of nonsense Lisa deposited is backed up by nothing.
It's nothing more than TP paranoia.
The Tea Partiers have never adequately been able to explain this basic tenant to their existence....just what freedoms have been threatened in the two years of Obama administration?
No guns have been confiscated without due process.
No one has been censored or imprisoned for dissenting opinions.
No churches or places of worship have been boarded up.
No one has had property seized and used to house our troops in this time of war.
No one has been charged with a crime without a writ of habeas corpus.
And other than prisoners at Gitmo, no one has been denied a speedy trial, or been subject to cruel or unusual punishment.
So educate us, please. Just what rights were taken away or threatened by President Obama and the Democrats....because after two years, I'd really like to know, and so would most of my progressive brothers and sisters.
(SIDEBAR)....once again, Sarah Palin chose to do the wrong thing....her video statement portraying herself as the ultimate victim, with six people dead and more than a dozen others wounded?
Without a doubt...Sarah is the most morally bankrupt person in American politics. So shockingly sad.
I am not sure how I stumbled in here.... that ain't no big deal...but when you start talking about a 'mass movement, like the Tea Party... I am reminded of the words of social philosopher Eric Hoffer....
“All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.” Hoffer wrote this @1951 and it still resonanates with a definitive truth.
What makes the Tea Party so especially incendiary is that THERE IS NO CENTRAL organization.... it has a discombobulated core that embraces many dislikes, yet proposes, as solution to social ills, nothing more than vague generalizations. OK... see you later.
OH gees.... as long as I am here, let me throw another Hoffer quote in just for good measure.
“When we lose our individual independence in the incorporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom—freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.”
primarily, he was commenting on the rise of Fascism and Communism.... but also applied many of this to the Red-Scare hysteria of the 1950's...... anyways... I'm out for coffee and a doughnut, not discussion...hopefully I have offered a thought, not a rant.
CSDuh and lisa, don't use my blog as your personal chatroom, thank you
thanks okjimm, good thoughts, glad you left them. Come by any time!
that's right CS, I'm in no mood to debate you. We have said all there is to say. good by. lisa has a blog go visit her....
The transfer of wealth to the upper class has been going strong since Reagan's first day in office. Nothing has changed under Obama. Fundamental transformation? The most liberal/socialist president ever? I wish. Linda is deluded.
I agree with the premise of Sue's post. Even though it sounds as if this guy is anti-government in general -- and not a Leftist or a Rightie. BUT I think the hatred coming almost exclusively from the Right certainly does add to the overall negative tone.
Sue, I agree with your response to Lisa's comment. Small government types never seem to mind that much when Republicans run up the debt and expand government. They may CLAIM that they, individually, were concerned, but where were the organized protests?
As I recall all the Iraq war protests came from the Left. Conservatives didn't say we can't afford nation building -- they called Lefties traitors for not supporting the President.
Hugh, I agree completely regarding Sarah Palin's video statement. The Daily Beast says that Palin "had a rare opportunity ... to reach out beyond her base and recalibrate her image...", but that she "chose to throw kerosene on the embers of a smoldering national controversy".
I think Palin's previous actions (the cross hairs on the map and "reload" rhetoric) and this unapologetic video prove Sue's thesis. It's more kerosene thrown on the fire.
With Palin's latest 8 minute rant, I think we are about to see her denouement and it's about time.
Speaking of traitors, Sue, why did you just HAVE to bring up that other traitor Perry? I'm <--> close to going on a rant about that sorry bastard.
Palin's self-absorbed telepromter 7minute pity party is a disaster for her.
As someone over at my blog said, either she is amazingly stupid or mad or her handlers are or both.
No one with any knowledge of what the "blood libel" means would EVER, EVER have inserted that loaded phrase into this tragedy--especially not when one of the victims is Jewish.
It's hard to belive anyone can be so tone deaf and insensitive in this tragedy, and yet Palin proves time and again that she is up to it.
The majority of the footsoldiers of hate who were inciting violence at the Healthcare/Wealthcare town halls were paid employees of the HMOs and health insurers who were ordered by their bosses to do what they did.
I am just amazed that Sarah Palin can conjure up a term like "blood libel" and then doesn't even have enough common sense to do a simple Google Search to see what it means before using it....
...on can only assume that she most likely had used the term before....
This, from the Huffington Post (3 MILLION plus hits a day), "Take the CEO of BP and blow his brains out. Tell all the other oil CEOs, 'you have an oil spill, you get the same.' No more oil spills will ever happen. Problem solved."......"I'll bet any money that if we just took the CEOs of these banks out, stood them up against a wall and liquidated them, this sort of thing wouldn't happen again."......And get this, folks, when another blogger challenged this fellow, he, the challenger, got deleted, not the frigging perpetrator of the violent imagery.
Oh, and as for Sarah Palin, OF COURSE SHE'S AN IDIOT!! The woman has basically degenerated into a mean-spirited and divisive perpetrator of hackneyed commentary (and, no, not a person that I would ever, ever, EVER, vote for). But a) the woman and the right are hardly alone in this and b)there isn't ANY evidence evidence WHATSOEVER that her stupid little cross-hairs had ANYTHING to do with this tragedy in Arizona. Nada.
well hi stranger! TAO I don't think Palin had a clue what she was saying which was written by her "speech" writer. What a dim wit....
WTF!!!??? Who is the smartass commenting with my name??? Am I gonna have to resort to moderation??? Can I have a little respect here???
yea its just plain fuckin rude you troll, get off my blog...
The term “blood libel” has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.
Sorry, forgot to quote the source as Alan Dershowitz.
to common sense:
"Of all the terms Palin could have used, from “defamation” to even “implicating me in murder,” why did Palin choose “blood libel”? As the conservative National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, who says he “agree[s] entirely with…Palin’s, larger point,” notes, “Historically, the term is almost invariably used to describe anti-Semitic myths about how Jews use blood — usually from children — in their ritual.” Indeed, many Jews consider the term extremely offensive, and the Anti-Defamation League and other prominent Jewish organizations have spoken out against its use dozens of occasions in the past.
Indeed, Jewish groups are taking offense to Palin’s choice of the term. Noting that accusations of blood libel have been “directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries,” the National Jewish Democratic Council condemned Palin’s use of the term:
Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a “blood libel” against her and others. This is of course a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries — and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today. [...]
All we had asked following this weekend’s tragedy was for prayers for the dead and wounded, and for all of us to take a step back and look inward to see how we can improve the tenor of our coarsening public debate. Sarah Palin’s invocation of a “blood libel” charge against her perceived enemies is hardly a step in the right direction.
Likewise, the president of the pro-Israel, pro-peace Jewish lobby J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said he was “saddened by Governor Palin’s use of the term ‘blood libel,’” adding that he hopes “she will choose to retract her comment [and] apologize“
You know Shaw, the problem if Palin ever does apologize or retracts will only be because she was pressured to do so and not because she felt it was the right thing to do and she was remorseful.
She is a sad and pathetic wretch. She knocks women's place in politics back 50 years at least.
Shaw ~ It was Barack Obama who stated during his campaign for President that "we are going to fundamentally transform the United States of America." So your accusation that Lisa was repeating talking points falls flat.
Many people did not think that the country needed "fundamental transformation" and that is the main reason the tea party came into existence. It had nothing to do with Obama's skin color, Sue, but everything to do with his large government "solutions" to problems. Huge government is the problem, not tea party patriots.
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