In the tsunami-sized wake of yet another shooting rampage, the mainstream media, blogosphere and Twitterverse have been ablaze with blame. During the first eight hours of reporting on Tuscon, the blogs and TV and radio pundits were awash with liberals pointing fingers at conservative leaders. Later there was a coordinated effort by conservatives to call the shooter a disgruntled liberal who killed a 9/11 baby. Both assertions are outrageous. For anyone, especially a media or political leader, to use a murdered nine-year-old coincidentally born on a symbolic date to further their aims is disgusting and shameful.
Meanwhile certain political leaders like Sarah Palin and a contributor to the Daily Kos were scrubbing websites of licentious content. As Twitter user David Dayen of Los Angeles (@ddayen) tweeted, "I'll say this, if your first instinct after hearing about a tragedy is to scrub your websites, you have a problem as a political movement." It certainly raises a question about consciousness of guilt.
As a result of a well publicized personal experience, I have become keenly aware that deliberately overheated rhetoric and pernicious public speech by our national leaders tacitly grants permission for the weak minded and mentally ill to commit atrocities. When incidents like these happen, I flash back to 1996 when I was evacuated moments before the park bombing at the Atlanta Olympic Games. Yesterday's shooter, Jarod Lee Loughner, echoes the right wing nut Eric Robert Rudolph who planted the Olympic bomb and others to carry out a mandate he felt he had from the national leaders of the pro-life and fundamentalist Christian movements.
At issue is not whether Loughner identified with either the Tea Party or with Communists or Anarchists. According to his MySpace page, he was a fan of both the uber-conservative Mein Kampf and ultra-liberal Communist Manifesto. He also cited many inflammatory literary works among his favorites. What we can legitimately infer is that Loughner is a young man attracted to strong rhetoric, and, from his incoherent YouTube ramblings, he feels that revolutionary violence is the only recourse for change. These sentiments are eerily similar to those one hears from certain media personalities.
Unfortunately, Loughner was living in a media atmosphere which created for him a tipping point. Reviewing the available raw data, the Arizona shooting that targeted Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed a 9-year-old child, a federal judge and several more has all of the hallmarks of other recent violence, each of which has been tied to political and religious calls to duty. Let's review what has happened in the span of just two years.
On May 31, 2009 Dr. George Tiller was assassinated by Scott Roeder for performing legal abortions in Colorado. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Roeder's attorneys tried to argue that he had, "no option but to use deadly force to protect others -- in this case, fetuses -- from an imminent threat." This rhetoric is almost verbatim from the pulpits of many prominent fundamentalist leaders.
On June 10, 2009 white supremacist James W. von Brunn entered the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., with a rifle and killed a security guard and wounded several tourists. Von Brunn was a big supporter of the Obama 'birther' conspiracy theory propagandized from the media pulpits of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs among others.
On November 5, 2009 U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 and wounded 32 on a shooting spree at Fort Hood. An American-born Muslim of Palestinian decent, it has been widely assumed that he became radicalized through his Islamic affiliations. However, military investigators have not officially linked him to any terror groups. In an email I received from forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, M.D. who specializes in mass shootings, "Hasan's shooting bore the qualities of an ideological Jihadist statement and that of a disgruntled workplace shooter at a career-threatening impasse with his superiors."
Welner says he has been critical of invesigators who say Hasan felt marginalized by his superior officers. However, there is some indication that Hasan tried to get some of his patients prosecuted for war crimes. Considering some of the irresponsibly inflated anti-military invective often blogged and promoted by left wing leaders like Moveon.org and Truthout, I have to wonder if that affected Hasan.
Something is clearly wrong with America when polemicists rule the day and when we are killing our own.
Let me be perfectly clear. The words of popular media and political personalities did not directly cause Loughner, von Brunn, Roeder and Hasan to go shoot people, but I believe they have created an unhealthy atmosphere where violence is considered strong. One fact on which I think we can all agree is that people look for information from "authorities" to buttress their positions. Information -- good and bad -- is readily available on the Information Superhighway, and it is easily twisted into any context. As conservative leader David Frum blogged today, "The talk did not cause the crime, but the crime should lead to reflection on the talk."
As for hard evidence of whether there was an atmosphere conducive to tip a disturbed person like Loughner to commit yesterday's violence, one only needs to listen to the words of Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, "We have become a mecca for hatred and bigotry." Conservatives most often treat the opinions of law enforcement as sacrosanct. I wonder if they are listening now? I hope we all are.
Follow Kimberly Krautter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kimbrlykrautter
Mark Goulston, M.D.: Jared Loughner: Understanding the Arizona Shooter from the Inside Out
Priscilla Warner: How to Sit Still When Tragedy Strikes
She also echoes something similar to what I've been thinking for a while in a more nuanced take on Loughner's politics. Loughner seemed to cherry-pick from radical ideologies all across the spectrum, developing an apolitical viewpoint to suit his justification for an act that by definition is political.
But go too far left or right and one ends up as an authoritarian. And that's the problem the far right, currently is the most vocal voice in America, and it has moved into authoritarianism.
Perhaps a dictionary would help: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberal
I'd like to point out that not only a Kos contributor had an inflammatory statement, Kos himself put a bullseye on Giffords two years ago. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/25/1204/74882/511/541568
And why do you consider these books "inflamatory"?
Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, The Republic, and Meno
I deeply appreciate Dr. Wellner for taking the time to read my blog and reach out to me for this correction. We all need good editing, and in the interest of expediency, I failed to do enough depth of research to cross check my source in this case.
I have been told by some Twitter followers that Kos claims to have NOT scrubbed his site of any material. If I was inaccurate, I apologize.
I am hoping for Progressives to take pause, to resist the comedy of ridiculing when we might deserve just as much jabbing of harshness should harshness be the rule. We have been part of the "accusation fest", the high horse righteousness, and while Conservatives have claimed God on their side, we have claimed sole right to social justice.
Whenever there is strong conflict that stops reflection or constructive action, fierce anger is often a mask for fear. Fear, as in any creature who feels cornered, can lead to violence; as such our worry shouldn't be about the ones who commit violent crimes only but the rest of us, including our children. We/they are watching, to see not only the actions of the few but the responses of the many.
We can learn from each other, get down from our pedestals and welcome our children into the discussion. We need their honesty and they need safety of expression from us.
Isn't it time we listened to them instead of preaching a tolerance we can't seem to live? I vote yes. Thanks.
Thank you for reading. I really enjoy reading your Huffington Post columns. Cheers!
That dynamic will probably change just a little as people like AZ Sheriff Dupnik come forward to speak about this trend.
And completely agreed with this statement: