Wing Nut Scramble (Live Blogging a Shooter Tragedy)

You don’t have to have a doctorate in psychology to figure out that the latest spree shooter had serious mental illness problems. What’s odd to me is the sudden scramble–typical  in these situations–by ideologues ready to label his mental illness as a symptom of political ideology.  No where is this more rampant than the number of right wingers that are taking one mention of one book–The Communist Manifesto–as an indication that suspected shooter Jared Loughner was a leftie.  That’s pretty interesting given that WAPO is reporting that he’s a veteran. Loughner tried to enlist in the military but was rejected. (See update below.) They’re screaming ‘leftie’ while simultaneously scrubbing their sites of items like the Palin Tweet and the Palin Map of Congressional Critterz’ Districts–including that of shooting victim Congress Woman Gifford–with rifle sight images over the top.  Is this kind of after-the-fact scrubbing a mea culpa of sorts?  They’re sure acting like they own it.

Giffords has been a target of violent threats for some time now.  The threats have come  from the right wing and the majority have occurred since the HCR vote last summer.  Folks that say that this shooter’s acts–no matter how linked to his personal mental hell–can’t be put into the context of  encouraging and enabling violence haven’t been paying attention. Violent imagery and rhetoric is a loaded gun.  It’s the same denial that comes from anti-abortion supporters and their disconnect from the shooting of Dr. Gun. You encourage it.  You own a role in it.  It’s not the root cause of mental illness, but it establishes violence as a potentially heroic act.  Most psychotic people are crazy but not stupid.  They can feel the heroic myth. Many seek a way to go down with it.

But it’s worth noting that Giffords — who in 2006 became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, at 36 — has, for more than a year, been the target of violence-tinged rhetoric from political opponents and of threats that appear to have come from right-wing activists.

Asked by the New York Post whether his daughter had any enemies, Giffords’s father replied: “The whole tea party.”

In August 2009, an attendee at a Giffords town-hall meeting dropped a handgun, leading Giffords’ staff to call the police. “We have never felt the need before to notify law enforcement when we hold these events,” her spokesman said at the time.

After Giffords voted in favor of the health-care overhaul in March, she said that vandals had broken the glass door of her Tucson office. “The rhetoric is incredibly heated, not just the calls but the emails, the slurs,” she told MSNBC at the time. “Things have really gotten spun up.”

Ben Smith has a brief thread up on the foot prints left in social media by alleged shooter Jared Loughner.  Some of them are bizarre rants about currency and the gold standard that are worthy of a Glenn Beck or Ron Paul fan.  There’s also some crazed references to correct English grammar and mind control.   Who knows which flake in the vast American Breakfast Bowl of ideology some of this stuff comes from?

Read the rest of this entry »