It was politically motivated, just not in the way some media and other pundits are trying to play it. ONE man attempted to assassinate a politician. That made it political. The shooter doesn't appear to have any real ties to a traditional party, just his own lunacy. Seems he had a problem with the congresswoman for quite some time. No grand conspiracy here. Just another nut! But we just can't have it be that simple, now can we? The talking heads need something to ramble on about.
and that is the bottom line. You can't sell much tv and print by saying.. this guy is mentally disturbed and so you cant apply an logic to his behavior, story over.
In order for it to actually matter which side he is on one would have to think that one side is actually better then the other when it comes to shooting people, or using heated rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that no matter what these lunatics hear they could some how interpret it to mean something which would lead them to kill. Look at the guy who murdered lennon (forget his name right now, brain fart) he was a fan of lennon by most accounts, but he was a whack job, and he went out and killed him. You cant honestly tell me that one side is any better then the other when it comes to this stuff, and that is what pisses me off, the liberal media has now put the conservative media on the defensive because of this, and they are coming out with all of the exact same comments which the left has said about the right, except that the left always tries to make the claim that the right is the only one who uses this rhetoric. Bottom line is that both sides use, and say stupid things about the other side, which could be considered questionable, and thus it really doesnt matter if this guy was a righty or a lefty, there are lunatics out there in equal proportion on both sides, and regardless of whether or not over heated rhetoric is used, they will find some sort of sick justification in their mind to murder someone. If we are going to start banning certain words in the political debate where does that end? Maybe we should also ban all violent movies and video games, maybe we should censor the internet.... It is a slippery slope when you start playing these games and saying that words set a nut job off when these psychos are going to exist whether the media exists or not.
Oh I agree with this, I really do. My gut feeling, under my own rhetoric I spew here, is that fear is rising all over the place, and ideas are being leaned on more than usual to "save us". (That's in quotes because there is no "saving us".) But, that feeling could be a result of the recent psychologic readings I've been doing.
Loughner's "ramblings" seem like the common far left wing language we hear every day! Dennis Kucinich wants to get rid of the Federal Reserve and still have a fiat currency. Sounds like Loughner's rants on having his "own currency." The Left's own "Dear Leader" - Bill Clinton wanted to debate the definition of "is"!!!!! Sounds like Loughner's ramblings on language. -gastropod
What scares me about this more then anything is the thought that there are probably hundreds of sick individuals out there who are seeing this and seeing how much attention this is getting, and are probably currently planning to do something similar to this themselves. This is on every single new channel 24/7 right now, and I know damn well someone is out there thinking about this, and probably considering copying this guy and taking someone else out, and this could very well cause a chain reaction. Another bad thing which could come of this would be if there was an election for her seat and a republican ended up winning it, some nut job would see that as evidence that what Loughner did ended up putting a new republican into congress. The media has ratcheted this thing up 10 times higher, and frankly i would be surprised if we didnt see another attempt in the coming months, by someone who was on the edge, who just got pushed over based on this incident.
Loughner names "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Mein Kampf" as two of his favorite books. The political messages couldn't be more different in these books, but that's irrelevant to a paranoid schizophrenic. However, there is something that he relates to: being a victim of larger forces and having the will to fight back. This feeds his paranoia, his feeling that he is being "controlled" (brain washing, mind control, etc.). He will identify with ANYTHING that feeds his paranoid delusions. It doesn't matter where on the political spectrum it falls. Loughner could feel empathy for someone today (e.g, Blacks or Jews), and then hate them tomorrow depending upon who he sees as the victim and who he sees as the victimizer (controller). He doesn't have a political point of view because he's not capable of making those distinctions. He only has the delusions that make up the "reality" of his paranoid psychotic world.
Why would that scare you? Maybe it is time. If one politician is gunned down it's a senseless act of murder, of course, but if <i>a hundred</i> were to meet such a fate, it could be revolution... which is not murder at all.
Where have you been? The kind of fiery rhetoric by the Palin's of the World certainly doesn't help. ‎"The crossfire is intense, so penetrate through enemy territory by bombing through the press, and use your strong weapons -- your Big Guns -- to drive to the hole. Shoot with accuracy; aim high and remember it takes blood, sweat and tears to win," - Sarah Palin It's been out there for quite some time and and people like Palin are idiots for thinking that making such statements don't carry circumstances with it. Hell, Gabby Giffords said exactly that . . . especially when the "unhinged and unbalanced" are looking for someone to follow . . . And let's also not forget Gifford's Tea Party opponent Jesse Kelly, who held a rally offering participants to âShoot a Fully Automatic M16″ to âGet on Targetâ and âRemove Gabrielle Giffordsâ.