As AI's resident non-American (and the ONLY ONE but seriously folks) I've been following the news about Gifford and the shooting in Tuscon a few days ago and found myself swaying between a number of opinions. Of course, from the moment the news broke, the blame hammer started swinging, and hasn't stopped since. I've found that, regarding blame, there are two major opinions:

1. The violent rhetoric espoused by politicians and pundits is to blame, or is certainly partly culpable, for the act -- and its subsets; (a) the right is chiefly responsible, (b) the left is chiefly responsible, and (c) neither "side" is responsible, but rather the whole general atmosphere; and
2. Crazy is as crazy does, and there can be no external blame allocated for the actions of a politically mixed, clearly deranged individual -- no matter how intuitive it may seem.

Now, here are two links, for interest:

www.thedailyshow.com - for the next several hours, anyway. The first part of the video is what I'm talking about, wherein Jon gives a heartfelt and stunningly beautiful message about the shooting. He basically comes down on the second opinion. I'll summarise, for the people who didn't watch it and miss it before it is replaced with the new episode:

Quote Originally Posted by Jon Stewart
I do think it's a worthwhile goal not to conflate our political opponents with enemies, if for no other reason than to draw a better distinction between the manifestoes of paranoid madmen and what passes for acceptable political and pundit speak. You know, it would be really nice if the ramblings of crazy people didn't in any way resemble how we actually talk to each other on TV.
He basically says that it would be nice if we could draw a neat causal line between violent political rhetoric and crazy people's acts of violence, but we can't -- however, we should examine our discourse more carefully, if only because the things that we and our politicians and our pundits are saying resemble these violent acts of insane hatred far too closely.

Then there's this link: http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/c...llness_gambit/ - about "holding the Right responsible" for its vitriolic hyperbole, irrational fights and hateful punditry. It also raises a salient point about "playing the mental illness card":

Quote Originally Posted by link
Beyond just the concerns about letting the right off the hook with this “crazy” stuff is my concern that this “crazy” excuse stigmatizes and dehumanizes the mentally ill. After all, dismissing Loughner as “crazy” and ignoring the influence that environment has on a mentally ill person who snaps does carry with it, as Jill noted, the implication that mentally ill people are far more different from sane people than they actually are. ... In fact, it does this in record time.
So, I find myself somewhere hovering between 1(a), 1(c), and 2.

As much as it'd be awesome to blame the right, I think it's more a case of blaming your American political culture -- the Right definitely leads the way in violent rhetoric ("second amendment solution" being, i believe, a particularly ...repulsive slogan of Palin's), but the Left is not quite exculpated*. In response to the GOP's infamous gun-sights-over-Democratic-congresspeople, the Dems released a similar image, with targets over their Republican counterparts. I think this illustrates two relevant things: one, that the Republicans show everyone who's boss when it comes to violent sentiment, as the really vicious connotation of a gun sight shits all over the relative silliness/annoyance/Robin Hood merry men in tights/"bullseye!" connotation of the "target"; and two, that the Left is not only too tolerant of violent rhetoric from the Right when they should be saying "hang on, we are a democratic nation, and this is not how we do things", but guilty of vainly, pathetically, trying to join in, like a little brother with a suction-cup archery set on a hunting trip.

If the Right are the more guilty perpetrators, the Left should consider themselves at the very least enablers. But, really, the Left is no less guilty -- they're just worse at it.

I'll be frank: I really despise the American right wing. The Republicans are a shameful bunch of cheaters, liars and selfish fuckers in the back pocket of corporations, and will do anything to thwart the Democrats and "Liberalism"*, whatever the cost to Americans. But, as has been widely reported, this dude liked Karl Marx as much as Ayn Rand, and reportedly lent towards Socialism (but was mostly a random bunch of fucking insane, politically), so one can't simply wave a hand and blame everything on the conservatives. Americans have to seriously look at what kind of culture they live in, rather than getting up to blame one particular side, which will only cause more dissent, hatred, and, if you believe the rhetoric culture is partly to blame, more violence.


Thoughts? I hope this thread doesn't die right here. It's a discussion I really want to have.




*Of course the idea that there IS a mainstream Left, or mainstream Liberalism, in the States (much like Aus) is absurd, but, relatively to the extreme Right they are the Left wing party, so, you know what I mean.