This will be a short diary. Mother Jones has published a must-read interview with Jared Loughner's friend Bryce Tierney. Tierney puts forward some very interesting comments on Loughner's potential motivations. Please read the interview by Nick Bauman and join me after the jump for some additional thoughts.
From the perspective of his friend Bryce Tierney, Jared Loughner's was definitely strange, and his ultimate motivation may have been sadly banal.
Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He's unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner "might have gone to some other rallies," he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: "He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, 'What is government if words have no meaning?'"
Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy Loughner. "He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question,' and I told him, 'Dude, no one's going to answer that,'" Tierney recalls. "Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."
I am quite surprised to see the level of partisan rhetoric, both here and from the right, continues largely unchecked by Saturday's events. Indeed it seems like just more fuel to the fire rather than an opportunity to reflect on our overheated political environment. Anyone with access to an audience is scrambling to use the tragedy to reinforce their own particular world view and to broadcast it as broadly and quickly as possible regardless of the facts.
Once again, please read the Mother Jones piece and join me in sharing thoughts and prayers for the victims.
Peace.
Update: Just a clarification in response to some of the comments. I don't think there is any comparison between the right's violent rhetoric and what is being said by the left. In fact I am appalled by the continuing false equivalency abetted by idiots like Matt Bai.
However there is a lot of outrage in this community about the right's failure to acknowledge that lack of equivalency. This is surprising to me since it has been apparent for some time that ¨they just don't get it.¨
I would encourage readers to look at this excellent story by Gary Younge of the Guardian. He makes the point better than I can that there are no longer ¨facts¨ in America, only ¨red facts¨ and ¨blue facts¨.
Update 2: From the comments. Many thanks to Kaleidescope for saying it better than I ever could.
The Current Media Narrative is Totally Wrong (1+ / 0-)
Because gun control is politically off the table for Democrats and we appear to have internalized the Reagan/Thatcher dismantlement of the welfare state, the only thing people want to talk about is whose rhetoric is to blame. This is stupid.
I'm all for civility in political discourse, to the extent that means not calling for people to harass, threaten or kill the other side. I'm also in favor of people refraining from de-humanizing the other side. And I understand the Republicans are the worst transgressors of what should be normal conventions of how to be politically active.
But the fact is that Loughner was a nut. That he was out walking around, apparently untreated, is a symptom of how withered community mental health services have become. I know that in my county, Humboldt County, California, the first budget the Supervisors reach for when they execute cuts is County Mental Health. They would never shut down the office that provides plot maps to people who want to subdivide or develop their property. They would never shut down the Recorder's office, where mortgages are recorded so people can borrow money against property. But cutting Public Health in general and mental health specifically, is perfectly acceptable.
And Loughner the nut was able easily to obtain a weapon that is not good for ANYTHING except massacring large numbers of people. A 9mm Glock with a 30 round magazine can't easily be hidden on your person to be used in self-defense. For home defense, a shotgun is much more effective because the pellets won't travel through walls and kill people you don't intend to shoot. And a shotgun is much more likely to kill the bad guy in a pinch. The only innocent reason to buy a 9mm Glock with a 30 round magazine is so that at the gun range you can play at being a gangster or terrorist. To that extent Hollywood glorifying this kind of violence is as responsible as anyone for this gun being put into the hands of the nut, Loughner, and is therefore as responsible as Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin for this happening. Loughner was not listening to them. He was listening to Hollywood. It is an obscenity that this gun is allowed to be sold.
So there you have it. The two main reasons this tragedy happened, hardly nobody wants to talk about because they are politically off the table. So we get the stupid finger pointing based on stupid offensive shit somebody said in the past.
by kaleidescope on Mon Jan 10, 2011 at 01:58:38 PM EST