In another diary just now [ Torture the Accomplices ], Whisperwolf reflected on some aspects of the awful shootings at Fort Hood, and included this passage from some Rightist response postings (advocating torture for the alleged accomplices):
A terrible event - but I don’t want anyone to call it an "act of violence" or "a terrible tragedy". It was an attack - one or more men decided with malice to attack a US military base. We need to get right down to the bottom of this - and, liberals, if the stories of accomplices in custody are true, this is where harsh interrogation might be needed: whoever was involved in this most emphatically does not have a right to remain silent.
I was deeply, horribly struck by that last, bolded (my highlight) sentence and posted a comment. But I've continued to mull it and want to throw it out here as it's own diary entry and invite response, commentary, rejoinders, or other reflection on this stark and terrible threshold. Jump on down if you're game.
Never mind that it has by now been pretty conclusively established that this deranged shooter--as usual--acted alone. In a pattern too, too similar to the long line of such acts of violence, whether directed against family members or perceived enemies or merely innocent strangers, this person was certainly assisted by all the proponents of gun ownership and lax laws that made it possible to go into that room armed to the teeth--but there are no "accomplices" in this case. Not so directly, at least, as in others of these cases that we've seen lately, where the circumstances at least, if not the actual situation itself, was in part abetted and prepared by a host of culpable co-conspirators (anti-choice extremists, racial and religious bigots, right wing political zealots, crazed NRA members determined to prevent any rational restraint on weapons distribution at the cost of scores of innocent lives, etc...).
Today's events, one could sadly conclude, are a natural corollary if not direct result of people insisting on wearing sidearms to political and community gatherings; a natural outgrowth of a society in which we are now making legal and desirable carrying guns into church and national parks; the logical extreme reached by those who urge violence as the solution to any problem that upsets them. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
But here's where the whole chain of sick circumstance really lost me: when I read that self-righteous Rightist writing that some alleged involvement in this matter, some possible barely suspected and totally uncorroborated potential involvement, necessarily meant that anyone tainted by that suspicion was "not entitled to remain silent."
As I wrote in my comments to Whisperwolf's diary, HUH!?
This might be the most telling and illustrative, and yet utterly perplexing, moment of insight into the wingnut mind I've yet read.
Wouldn't it be in order to defend, among other things, our Constitution and all those beloved Rights that the Right is forever nattering on and on about loving and protecting that the soldiers killed, injured, or endangered actually enlisted? Wasn't that, oh, in the oath they took? Isn't it allegedly to defend those same rights that all this "increased security" is mandated, and offenses like "enhanced interrogation" devised?
And so, in pursuit of that, it's ok just to decide--based on what? the perceived heinous nature of the crime? participation in a possible plot rather than a spontaneous act of violence?--that some people, citizens or not, have suddenly lost their Constitutionally mandated rights, like the right not to incriminate themselves through speech?
Perhaps this sad imitation of subhuman life masquerading in a waste of flesh would care to extend the same principle to those who aided and abetted any of the lunatics shooting and killing abortion providers, or those who threaten and terrorize innocent women seeking those service, or crazy gun-toting madmen who walk into churches and open fire at random, etc.
It makes my head hurt, my heart weep for my country, and my brain nauseated in disgust at the sheer, unmitigated stupidity required to spout that crap.
So, am I way off base? Does this not SCREAM for attention? Does this not expose yet again and yet more deeply the illogical, irrational hypocrisy at the heart of all that...NOISE emanating from Over There?