This is the rather bizarre mugshot of Jared Loughner that was released yesterday afternoon. He has been assigned lawyer Judy Clarke, who defended the Unabomber.
One of the more interesting facts to emerge is that Loughner was expelled from his community college after complaints from classmates that he seemed on the edge of violence.
In the meantime, the Sheriff is being attacked for criticizing right-wing commentators for their over-the-top rhetoric, including conservative icon, Rush Limbaugh. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik stated “The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information. . . [Limbaugh] attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior in my opinion is not without consequences.” [Update: Limbaugh has reportedly fired back by saying that the Democratic Party supports Loughner and is “attempting to find anybody but him to blame.” Wasn’t he supposed to be Costa Rica?] Reportedly near the scene of the shooting is this billboard:
Sarah Palin is also being criticized for putting a bullseye over Giffords’s district as someone she has “set her sights on” for defeat:
Notably, Palin was previously associated with threats against the President by the Secret Service, here.
Gifford’s husband has also blamed inflammatory rhetoric for the shooting.
For its part, the Brady Campaign, may the following point in a statement from Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence:
“The 22 year-old shooter in Tucson was not allowed to enlist in the military, was asked to leave school, and was considered “very disturbed” (according to former classmates), but that’s not enough to keep someone from legally buying as many guns as they want in America.” For the full statement, click here
One of the more worrisome (and predictable) developments is the proposal of legislation to further criminalize speech, here.
publically?
Me type English goodly.
Kevin,
We’re in agreement; although I think the Secret Service should have (publically) opened a file on Angle and Bachman.
Chan L.
Goebbels was minister for propaganda so one cannot assume that he actually meant anything he said. The statements by Goebbels that you quote may be no more than the the propoaganda for that moment.
Facebook Group “I Hate It When I Wake Up & Sarah Palin Is Still Alive” Passes 2,000 Members!
http://punditpress.blogspot.com/2011/01/facebook-group-i-hate-it-when-i-wake-up.html
Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama
Sarah Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama’s patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/sarah-palin/3405336/Sarah-Palin-blamed-by-the-US-Secret-Service-for-death-threats-against-Barack-Obama.html
From Huffington Post (1/10/2010)
Gun Violence and the Lessons of Tucson: Will the Chambers Once Again Be Loaded Against the American People?
By Drew Westen, Ph.D., Psychologist and neuroscientist
(Professor Westen is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/gun-violence-and-the-less_b_806564.html
Excerpt:
Second, the fact that the shooter is mentally ill does not mean that his mind and brain exist in a vacuum. When Bill O’Reilly and his ilk on Fox began their attacks on “Tiller the Killer” — the physician who provided legal abortions until he was gunned down in his church in the name of Jesus — they fired the first shots in the uncivil war that has just claimed six more lives. To make the claim that the constant propagandizing against Tiller by a television network — including the publicizing of his whereabouts — played no role in the events that led an assassin to choose him as his target would be as psychotic as Loughner’s incoherent YouTube diatribes. Surely a deranged killer could have found someone else to target among the over 300 million people who call this country home.
But the fact that the causal link between Fox’s jihad against an American citizen and his ultimate assassination at the hands of a religiously motivated terrorist never became a topic of widespread discussion except on a couple of evening shows on MSNBC, that it prompted no change in the way the rightwing propaganda machine has villified American citizens, and that it prompted little more than one or two brief written statements from our top elected officials — perhaps a congressional hearing or two might have been in order? — is a profound indictment of both our media and our political system.
And now we have seen the same thing play out again.
The quasi-delusional rantings of media personalities such as Glenn Beck and the cognitively and psychiatrically impaired candidates and elected officials we have come to accept as part of the American political landscape in the 21st century, like the hate-mongering of Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona, are part of the political and psychological air a psychotic shooter like Jared Loughner breathes.
Did prominent personalities like Brewer (or Sarah Palin, who literally put Gabby Giffords in her “crosshairs”) cause this attack? No, any more than Bill O’Reilly and Rupert Murdoch caused the jihadist attack on a physician who had violated a terrorist’s religious sensibilities — or, for that matter, any more than jihadist websites that publicize the “blasphemies” perpetrated by the United States cause alienated young men to become suicide bombers against us or our allies.
Did Beck, Brewer, and crew contribute to the conditions that created the latest assassinations, irrespective of the prayers and pieties they and Republican politicians like John Boehner are now lavishing on the people they have encouraged their fellow citizens to hate (those with their “job-killing” and “baby-killing” agendas — which they apparently pursue when they aren’t setting up “death panels”)? Try reading alleged shooter Loughner’s rants about government, the terrorists who have seized control over it, and what they are doing to our Constitution and argue that he was not breathing in Foxified fumes and Brewer’s bigotry.
The Giffords Tragedy: Is the Media Partly at Fault?
By Matt Taibbi (1/10/2011)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/the-giffords-tragedy-is-the-media-partly-at-fault-20110110
Excerpts:
Greetings, folks. Have a bit of a shorter mailbag this morning because of multiple deadlines — also a bit distracted by the Giffords business.
About that story… Watching the coverage yesterday I was genuinely revolted by the reflexive ass-covering efforts by virtually everyone involved in either the politics or political media businesses. I turned on Fox just out of curiosity last night, and saw one pundit after another point out that Jared Loughner was probably a schizophrenic, a statistical aberration, and that no wider conclusions can or should be drawn by the actions of one lone nutcase. We can already see that the “Jared Loughner acted alone” defense is going to be widely employed.
But I don’t think that explanation is really going to fly. Understanding that we don’t know enough yet to completely explain what happened, and that there were severe and mistaken overreactions after events like Oklahoma City, the early evidence suggests that there’s a real media-culpability story here, that this person (and others who’ve made threats or committed politically-motivated acts of violence in recent years, especially this year) was driven in part by heated rhetoric.
Which makes sense. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we in the media understand that our job descriptions do not entirely overlap with the requirements of good citizenship. If you’re in a marriage, or are a parent or living with parents, or have brothers or sisters or close friends, when you argue over a difficult issue, you don’t just take out all the weaponry in your arsenal and blast away. In the interests of preserving the relationship, and because you respect and love the other person as a human being, you argue as politely and respectfully as possible. And your goal in arguing is always to fix the actual problem — there’s no other, ulterior motive.
That’s just not the case in either journalism (and I should know– more on that momentarily) or politics. In politics, you don’t need to treat everyone with decency and humanity, just 51% of the crowd. Actually, given that half or less than half of all people don’t vote, the percentage of people who require basic decency and indulgence is probably even lower than that, maybe 20-25% of the population. There’s plenty of power and money to be won by skillfully stimulating public anger against some or all of the rest, and there are few rewards for restraint.
In the media, the situation is even worse. You can make vast fortunes riling up mobs. And because it’s a fiercely competitive market, there’s an obvious and immediate benefit to using superheated rhetoric — it’s more entertaining, gains more attention, and definitely gets more viewers and listeners and, er, readers.
And not only is there no incentive for restraint, there’s actually a huge disincentive for restraint, because for many of us in the punditry world, our livelihoods depend upon cultivating audiences who come to expect a certain emotional payoff for tuning in. If you’ve trained them to expect to have their prejudices validated and their sense of Superiority Over the Other stroked every time they turn on your program, they’re not going to like it when the show comes on and the editorial storyline is completely opposite. For the same reason audiences checked out when Mork married Mindy, or when a straightforward detective show like House became a sappy relationship drama, political audiences who get off on anger will start turning the channel when their needs aren’t met.
So when you the pundit start admitting to being wrong, and forgiving your enemies, and questioning yourself, and making your message that even people with views different from your own are thinking, feeling human beings who deserve your respect — well, none of those things tend to help you keep your market share. What does win market share is bashing the living fuck out of people your audiences love to hate (and most of the time, it’s you who’ve trained them to hate those people). That’s just a fact, and anyone in this business who’s honest with himself knows that. That’s why Rush Limbaugh can’t come on the air today and start telling his Dittoheads that his whole career isn’t serious at all but rather a schtick, a thing he does to make money, and that while he maybe does believe some of the things he says, most of the venom is a wholly fictional additive, that the liberals he spends all day implying to you are not really human and don’t love their country are citizens just like you, who in reality want all the same things for themselves and their children that you do. He can’t do that, because it would be professional suicide for him to say so.
*****
To see that, all you have to do is attend almost any family gathering, where once-loving relationships have been completely lost because of the overheated right-left culture war. If real family relationships are being lost to this kind of political debate, if someone on TV can reach into your living room and break up your family without knowing anything about you or even knowing that you exist, that tells us that this mechanized mass-media rhetoric has been almost unimaginably successful at dehumanizing whole classes of people.
Anyway, I think the reason that many people are going to be criticizing right-wing rhetoric in particular in the wake of the Giffords incident is not for what people like Rush and Sarah Palin say openly, but precisely because their underlying message is suspect. I think it’s pretty clear that in many cases, and especially with people like Beck, their hottest rhetoric is delivered with a conspiratorial wink, as in, “I’d be more explicit about the threat your political enemies pose, but I can’t. But you know what I’m trying to say about them, and about what has to be done.” Beck in particular gets his market share by going further in that direction than his competitors.
But identifying and proving the truth about those unspoken messages is difficult to impossible, and it’s going to be denied in the usual quarters, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Moreover, even asserting that that hidden agenda exists will inevitably elicit a paranoid response that might exacerbate the situation. So I’m not sure what needs to be done. A good start, though, might be for all of us in the media business to admit that this might be on us, that the built-in professional incentives in our field are often wrong for society, and that we should at least start talking about what we need to do to change that.
Mike Appleton
If mental illness were a form of hemorrhoids, there would be coverage.
=================================================================
kinda shows where our priorities are, doesn’t it.
Or perhaps instead of “fictional character”, I should use mespo’s earlier definition: “bullshit artist”.
dialogue\ˈdī-ə-ˌlȯg, -ˌläg\, n.,
1: a written composition in which two or more characters are represented as conversing
2a : a conversation between two or more persons; also : a similar exchange between a person and something else (as a computer) b : an exchange of ideas and opinions (organized a series of dialogues on human rights c : a discussion between representatives of parties to a conflict that is aimed at resolution (a constructive dialogue between loggers and environmentalists)
3: the conversational element of literary or dramatic composition (very little dialogue in this film)
4: a musical composition for two or more parts suggestive of a conversation
Since definitions 3 & 4 are right out, which is it, Brian?
Definition 1 or 2?
Because definition 2 constitutes a conversation and definition 1 implies one or both of us are fictional characters.
As I am a real person operating under a pseudonym (my real identity is known to some other posters here and Prof. Turley), that can only lead me to the conclusion alluded to earlier: that you are a fictional character.
Thanks for playing.
BIL,
You have my full support in having discussions with people who are willing to have discussions with you. I am unwilling to have a discussion with you, therefore we, plural, cannot have discussion because I do not discuss with you.
What I do instead is of dialogue, as in Martin Buber”s “I and Thou.”
When someone attempts to use discussion in the form of an insult directed at me, I decline to accept the insult. When someone attempts to escalate the use of discussion in the form of an insult directed at me, I decline to accept the insult, and respond with the best form of dialogue I can find.
There is something some personality theorists name “ego boundary violation.” Your informing me that you and I have had a discussion comprises, within me, a hint of your doing a violation of my ego boundaries, by defining me in terms of yourself. With such apologies as may be relevant, sorry, I decline to accept the compliment and decline to return the complement.
Good night to all, and to all, a good night…
Sorry, after shutting this computer off, it came to my mind that my prior comment may be interpreted as cynical or sarcastic. Such was not my intention, not at all.
Yet I may have contrasting associations of meanings with words because of having a life not the same as any of the lives of anyone else who here comments.
What I remembered was a game sometimes played in my old neighborhood, East Garfield Park, in Chicago. When I first lived there, I was homeless and without a job, and was allowed to stay out of the rain by sleeping in a cleaned-up coal bin in the basement of the parsonage of a neighborhood church. Not everyone has experienced that sort of freedom.
The neighborhood game was “dozens.”
Omitting Ebonics and such, and doing my best in attempting to use standard English, the game is played rather like this:
A says, “Your mother…”
B says, “Your mother…”
A says, “Your mother…”
B says, “Your mother…”
.
.
.
B says, “Back soon.”
B returns with a piece and, the piece says, “BANG!”
A justifiably wins the game by involuntarily falling down.
A has won his peace, eternal peace.
.
.
.
B may get caught with his piece by The Man; if so, B may lose his piece and his peace.
So, A wins!
Or, did I miss something?
Dozens is, perhaps, similar to “Global Thermonewcuelure War,” as in the movie, “War Games.” The only way to win is not to play.
Oops, to much watching TV. Too much believing in our prior President?
In my dictionary, the proper spelling is “thermonuclear.” 🙂 But that spelling does not make sense to me in terms of the standard pronunciation now in vogue…
BBB,
As to “prosecute”, what exactly did you think the “where we find them” part meant?
You find criminals though discovery and prosecution.
We do still operate under the maxim in this country (although maybe not for long) of innocent until proven guilty.
Brian,
Save it for someone still buying your act.
And learn to read – “must” was a typo.
typo\ˈtī-(ˌ)pō\, n.,
: an error (as of spelling) in typed or typeset material
BBB,
Well then, you better get better at recognizing the rhetorical use of “you”.
Brian,
“We have yet to have a discussion regarding anything because I never discuss anything with anyone; this being so because of a philosophical principle I continue to demonstrate, whether or not it is recognized by anyone else.”
Really? Because by addressing me and my response, we are having a discussion.
discussion \di-ˈskə-shən\. n.,
1: consideration of a question in open and usually informal debate
2: a formal treatment of a topic in speech or writing
So unless the “philosophical principle” you are demonstrating is pontification (meaning 2)?
pontificate \pän-ˈti-fə-ˌkāt\ v., i.v.,
1 a : to officiate as a pontiff b : to celebrate pontifical mass
2: to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way
We are having a discussion right now.
“If, as you used the contraction, “We’ve” refers to you and me or to others and me on this blawg, then, “We’ve” never had a discussion because I do not participate in discussions, and your sincerely believing that I have discussed anything with anyone at any time in my life can only mean that you surely have a way to be more familiar with the actual minute details of my life than I, having lived my actual life, could ever actually be.
As I find your (infallible?) method of understanding other people (without error?) to be a uniquely original invention, I strongly suggest that you patent the process and get fabulously rich almost immediately thereafter, if such happens.”
As WE HAVE had interactions about the adversarial process in the past, WE HAVE had a discussion about it.
As to the third paragraph, you should know that I don’t equate autism to a get out of jail free card if you just want to act like a dick without challenge by hiding behind autism. I strongly suggest you patent that.
“Adversarial and contentious are plausibly synonyms; authoritarian parenting is also passive-aggressive parenting, and I would conjecture, were I foolish enough to do so, but am not so foolish, that some aspects of your socialization may have included authoritarian aspects of such nature as my life circumstances utterly denied to me.”
You’re about to find out something about my socialization.
Plausibly does not equate to actually.
adversarial \ˌad-və(r)-ˈser-ē-əl, -ˈse-rē-\, adj.,
: of, relating to, or characteristic of an adversary or adversary procedures (an adversarial system of justice with prosecution and defense opposing each other)
contentious \kən-ˈten(t)-shəs\, adj.,
1: likely to cause disagreement or argument (a contentious issue)
2: exhibiting an often perverse and wearisome tendency to quarrels and disputes
“While I am content to allow that you, along with a vast majority of people now living, may somehow happen to be true believers in the adversarial process, that simply just ain’t my religion.”
Since people by in large are contentious by nature (you’re getting an example right now), there is a necessary role for adversarial process in legal systems of any flavor. Dispute resolution is a primary function of government. This is not a religious view point but a functional reality of legalism, but I suppose your American Government teacher told you it was rooted in ecclesiastics – also a load of bullshit. Without adversarial process for dispute resolution, there would be rampant vigilantism.
vigilante \ˌvi-jə-ˈlan-tē\, n.,
: a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice
You know. Like vigilantes who go out and shoot people because they can absent any proof or an intervening moderator like you find in adversarial process with judges and juries.
“I never teach anyone my religion. As best am able, I describe what I have learned for the simple reason that I never know absolutely for sure that no one will ever find a useful tidbit within something I share.”
Well bully for you! I’m not talking about religion either. I’m talking about the law. In case you haven’t noticed, this is a legal blog.
“Alas, I know where to look, and I do find “tragedies like this” happening many times, every day. That which adversarial process purports to remedy is that which adversarial process has previously caused, in a viciously addictive displacement cycle of oft-compounded atrocities.”
Bullshit. Contentions cause conflict and conflict leads to violence. Adversarial process is the alternative to un-moderated conflict and violence. What you see happening every day are instances where adversarial process was disregarded and self-help – often in the form of vigilantism – chosen as the option.
“Perhaps, without any merit on my part, I was born as though unable to internalize the trap of collective folly?”
But you were born with a staggering ability to obfuscate with purple prose.
You overplayed your hand with your earlier Sun Tzu comment, Brian.
Your last post sealed the deal.
RE: Slartibartfast, January 11, 2011 at 11:21 pm
“Buddha said:
“When I want to insult someone, it’s must nastier than that.”
Must? Is that like an alot?”
I have trouble with words, so I checked my dictionary. Something musty must have must.
So, definition of “must” turns out to be, “The quality or condition of being stale or musty.”
Oh, oh; “must” and “musty” are defined in terms of each other. Circularity circles, like unending cycles of abuse?
That takes me to definition of “musty”: “1. Stale or moldy in odor or taste. 2a. Hackneyed or trite; dull. 2b. Out of date; antiquated. 2c. Out of use or practice; rusty.
So, I find that “must” beautifully describes you when you want to insult someone; which grieves me deeply, because I admire your work as it has appeared on this blawg.
You help me to glimpse possible ways of understanding people who are apparently suffering as though not yet healed of their hurts. For that, I am grateful.
I still have trouble with that word…
James M.,
He didn’t say, “Let’s attack criminals where ever we find them”.
You’re right. What BIL said was “let’s start punishing criminals where we find them”.
Please explain to me the intricacies of the delicate balance between “attack” and “punish”. When you’re finished, you can tell me how you find “where we find them” to involve any sort of due process.
When you’re finished, you’ll be graded on intellectual honesty. 🙂
You might find that “prosecute” generally precedes “punish”. (if due process is a consideration) I think you’ll come to find my interpretation of what was stated to have been reasonably deduced. It may be denied, but not all deniability is plausible. 🙂 The words may have just been poorly chosen. I’d find that to be plausable.
BIL,
“you apparently have a low threshold for insult.”
I do. I don’t hurl them at others, either. Neither a blog, nor a courtroom, nor a town hall meeting, stands a chance of maintaining civility when insults are permitted to penetrate the proceedings. It’s called mutual respect, and it’s of paramount importance to any intelligent exchange of ideas.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, January 11, 2011 at 10:22 pm
We have yet to have a discussion regarding anything because I never discuss anything with anyone; this being so because of a philosophical principle I continue to demonstrate, whether or not it is recognized by anyone else.
If, as you used the contraction, “We’ve” refers to you and me or to others and me on this blawg, then, “We’ve” never had a discussion because I do not participate in discussions, and your sincerely believing that I have discussed anything with anyone at any time in my life can only mean that you surely have a way to be more familiar with the actual minute details of my life than I, having lived my actual life, could ever actually be.
As I find your (infallible?) method of understanding other people (without error?) to be a uniquely original invention, I strongly suggest that you patent the process and get fabulously rich almost immediately thereafter, if such happens.
Adversarial and contentious are plausibly synonyms; authoritarian parenting is also passive-aggressive parenting, and I would conjecture, were I foolish enough to do so, but am not so foolish, that some aspects of your socialization may have included authoritarian aspects of such nature as my life circumstances utterly denied to me.
While I am content to allow that you, along with a vast majority of people now living, may somehow happen to be true believers in the adversarial process, that simply just ain’t my religion.
I never teach anyone my religion. As best am able, I describe what I have learned for the simple reason that I never know absolutely for sure that no one will ever find a useful tidbit within something I share.
Alas, I know where to look, and I do find “tragedies like this” happening many times, every day. That which adversarial process purports to remedy is that which adversarial process has previously caused, in a viciously addictive displacement cycle of oft-compounded atrocities.
Who can know or understand better than the circumstances of life have given actual opportunity to know or understand?
Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., has written a book I have found useful, “Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life,” Puddle Dancer Press, 2003.
There also is Briskin, Erickson, Ott, & Callanan, “The Power of Collective Wisdon and the Trap of Collective Folly,” Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009.
Perhaps, without any merit on my part, I was born as though unable to internalize the trap of collective folly?