I find much to agree with in what Brendan Nyhan said yesterday:
People have been having a hard time holding two ideas in their head at the same time:
- What Paul Krugman calls "eliminationist rhetoric" is bad.
- Contrary to his suggestion, there is no evidence that such rhetoric caused Saturday's events. Even if such evidence is later found, it would not justify the evidence-free claims that have been made in the last 48 hours.
I think many of us had some of the same instincts on Saturday: a Democratic politician was shot in the head at point-blank range; ergo, she was shot in the head because she is a Democratic politician; ergo, people who say violent and extreme things about Democratic politicians bear some responsibility for this.
But we don't have any evidence of that linkage yet.
As we've learned more as Loughner's acquaintances and teachers have spoken to the press, mental illness likely played a very significant role in shaping his thinking and actions which led to Saturday's horrors. Now, it's certainly true that the political culture may have shaped his delusions, but we don't know that yet. Indeed, there's a lot we don't know yet.
At some point, we'll find out Loughner's browser search history. And what books and magazines were really in his room. And what he was saying to people in the days and weeks before Saturday. This is the combined job of law enforcement and the media, by doing direct investigation of the facts and evidence. It's not something we can do by Google from home.
This feels, in some ways, like Columbine inverted. "It was Marilyn Manson and the video games," some conservatives insisted pretty quickly. But it wasn't. It was one horrible psychopath who found a vulnerable accomplice. So let's be patient here. Maybe extremist right-wing rhetoric did play a role here. Maybe. But maybe it was just a mentally ill young man who needed some adult to take the extra step to make sure he got help, and it just didn't happen.
We're a fact-based community. That includes this, too. Yes, there's a lot of unhealthy political rhetoric out there, but that doesn't mean it's responsible for these deaths.