Visual source: Newseum
Laurie Penny:
The language of lunacy is political. When I first heard that Islamist terrorists had slaughtered up to 80 innocent people in Norway, I was at a gathering of left-wing activists—the sort of people who are ordinarily supposed to question knee-jerk assumptions about political butchery and the Islamic faith. Very few of us did. "It's because they reprinted that Danish cartoon," someone said, reading from the newswires. We nodded solemnly. We did not think to ask whether the ethnicity and ideology of the killers had yet been confirmed. And nobody used the word "madman."
The next day, even as The Sun's headline screeched that "Al-Qa'ida" had launched "Norway's 7/7," it emerged that everyone's first guess had been wildly wrong. Not only is the man responsible for the monstrous attacks in Utøya and Oslo a white, Christian European, he is also a fanatical anti-Islamist, claiming common ground and possible direct links with far-right groups across Europe, including Britain.
Immediately, there was an embarrassed scramble to change the rhetoric. No longer was the killer a criminal mastermind, part of a sinister "terror" network—he was simply a "madman," a "psycho," a "lone nutter." Where few had paused to question the pernicious, organised frenzy supposedly driving any Islamist assailant to acts of slaughter, these crimes were clearly the product of a deranged mind, acting alone, and by that logic had absolutely nothing at all to do with the rise of far-right extremism in Europe and of popular Islamophobia across the West.
Michael Reagan says the murdered Norwegians would be alive if their government had not disarmed them.
How long would the Norway gunman have lasted in Texas or any state where concealed-carry laws are on the books? I ran a survey while on a cruise: in Texas, 3 minutes; in Montana, 7 to 8 minutes; in Arizona, 2 minutes; and in Nevada, 3 to 5 minutes.
Ah! The New York Times provides us with five of the most sought-after words in punditry: "David Brooks is off today."
Paul Krugman punches big fat holes in a myth-in-the-making:
So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.
Richard Wolff:
The crisis of the capitalist system in the US that began in 2007 plunged millions into acute economic pain and suffering. The "recovery" that began in early 2009 benefited only the minority that was most responsible for the crisis: banks, large corporations and the rich who own the bulk of stocks. That so-called recovery never "trickled down" to the US majority: working people dependent on jobs and wages.
The countless claims of "recovery" as if it were a general economic event spread across the entire US economy were, and are, lies. They hide the tragic truth of ongoing economic crisis for the many.
Eugene Robinson:
Conservatives are on a winning streak because they have a Big Idea that serves as an animating, motivating, unifying force. It happens to be a very bad idea, but it’s better than nothing — which, sadly, is what progressives have.
The simplistic Big Idea that defines today’s Republican Party is that taxes are always too high and government spending is always wasteful. Therefore, both taxes and spending need to be reduced.
Tim Rutten recalls his assignment to the Oklahoma City bombing 16 years ago:
[I]t's clear that our current notions of tolerance are dangerously flaccid. It no longer will do, as Isaiah Berlin once pointed out, to shrug and say: I believe in kindness and you believe in concentration camps, and let's leave it at that. That's not tolerance; it's indifference in which respect for free speech is less a value than an alibi.
If speech is important enough to protect, it deserves to be taken seriously, particularly when it is hateful. Wading through this garbage is like swimming in sewage and, nearly always, unbearably tedious. Oslo, however, reminds us that this propaganda can't be ignored.
William Greider thinks President Obama got it wrong:
Whatever supposed solutions Congress eventually enacts, the misleading quality of the debt crisis should become widely understood once the action is completed. The debt and deficits will probably keep expanding, because the economy will remain stagnant or worse, with near 10 percent unemployment and falling incomes, and that is fundamentally what drives deficits higher. It should become obvious that deficit reduction did nothing to revive economic growth or to create jobs. In fact, cutting federal spending may make things worse, because it withdraws demand from the economy at the very moment when demand for goods and services is woefully inadequate.
David Corn focuses on the media's swallowing of the GOP's bogus message:
What does the news media do when a critical national debate is tainted by a lie? Not a whole lot.
During the debt ceiling showdown, the Republicans have clearly calculated that an effective charge to hurl at President Barack Obama and the Democrats is that the president, by asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling (which used to be a routine maneuver for Capitol Hill), is requesting a "blank check" for government spending.