Even though this clip is from 2010, it's a lurid foreshadow of how 2011 was to begin:
And yes, sadly, there's a Nevada Angle to this story.
While she may not have been the main cause of the Tucson massacre that killed six people and wounded nineteen others, including US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), Sharron Angle's and the tea party's increasingly violent rhetoric certainly helped to create the environment that encouraged fringe radicals like Jared Lee Loughner to use "Second Amendment Remedies". Back in January, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik pointed it out.
“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” [...]
“We need to do some soul searching … It’s the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business. People tend to pooh-pooh this business about the vitriol that inflames American public opinion by the people who make a living off of that. That may be free speech but it’s not without consequences.”
And the Southern Poverty Law Center researched the origins of the conspiracy theories Loughner embraced, and found some startling clues for what motivated him to turn violent.
At one point, Loughner refers disparagingly to “currency that’s not backed by gold or silver.” The idea that silver and gold are the only “constitutional” money is widespread in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement that produced so much violence in the 1990s. It’s linked to the core Patriot theory that the Federal Reserve is actually a private corporation run for the benefit of unnamed international bankers. So-called Patriots say paper money — what they refer to with a sneer as “Federal Reserve notes” — is not lawful.
At another, Loughner makes extraordinarily obscure comments about language and grammar, suggesting that the government engages in “mind control on the people by controlling grammar.” That’s not the kind of idea that’s very common out there, even on the Internet. In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that Loughner is taking ideas from Patriot conspiracy theorist David Wynn Miller of Milwaukee. Miller claims that the government uses grammar to “enslave” Americans and offers up his truly weird “Truth-language” as an antidote. For example, he says that if you add colons and hyphens to your name in a certain way, you are no longer taxable. Miller may be mad as a hatter, but he has a real following on the right.
Loughner talks about how you “can’t trust the government” and someone burns a U.S. flag in one of his videos. Although certain right-wing websites are already using that (and his listing of The Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books) to claim that Loughner was a “left-winger,” that does not strike me as true. The main enemy of the Patriot movement is certainly the federal government. And so-called Patriots have certainly engaged in acts like burning the flag.
And if you think this is all just "crazy talk", tell that to Iowa. According to PPP, Ron Paul has now taken the lead there as the Iowa Caucus is fast approaching. Remember, Ron Paul has repeatedly winked and nodded at these conspiracy theories as he's trying to turn the fringe into mainstream. And it's not just Paul. The whole radical right likes to play footsie with this kind of crazy... Until something like this occurs, when they then try to rewrite history.
OK, so Loughner may have been dabbling in some looney tunes nonsense, possibly even including a known white supremacist hate group. What does this have to do with Glenn Beck... Or Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle for that matter? Well, it comes back to the ["tea party"]. The "tea party" is a sort of umbrella classification of a number of far right organizations and politicians, but there is definitely strong evidence to show that leading "tea party" figures are trying to legitimize the same extreme ideology of the extreme right that influenced past terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh.
And worse, as Glenn Beck warns of supposed "conspiracies of the left" to bring about "imminent violent revolution", and as Sarah Palin tells her followers, "never retreat, instead RELOAD!", and as Sharron Angle suggests "Second Amendment Remedies" to take care of "enemies in our own system... in the walls of Congress"...
Far too many media pundits and politicians in DC have been far too willing to simply dismiss this as "politics as usual". This is NOT "politics as usual". This is an ever escalating culture of political violence that must stop!
Again, I had feared something like this would eventually happen. Last year, I feared Harry Reid would be the victim. I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the teabaggers' unplugged, unfiltered, and unfettered irrational hatred of Harry Reid... As well as President Barack Obama, for that matter. While "Tea Party, Inc." consultants in California were just focusing on building enough opposition to win an election, the opposition among many teabaggers ran far deeper.
And that January, we found out the hard way how deep that was.
Yet while we saw the far right turn increasingly radical, we also saw glimmers of hope as folks in The Southwest turned away from it. Pay attention again to Gabby's own words.
Strangely enough, Giffords talked with an long time Republican friend about starting a campaign to tone down the increasingly extreme rhetoric in today's politics right before her "Congress on Your Corner" town hall that turned so bloody. Yet while Giffords herself ultimately couldn't lead on this, others soon filled that void. Extreme anti-immigrant Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now facing his own legal troubles for politicizing law enforcement there. Russell Pearce, the state senator who briefly turned Arizona's legislature into a breeding ground for "tea party" extremism, was recalled by his own constituents just last month. Jan Brewer, the Arizona Governor that signed the SB 1070 "papers, please" law and campaigned for reelection on it, is now seeing her popularity fade fast in light of a failed redistricting power grab. And in another twist of fate, Daniel Hernandez, the intern who helped to save Gabby Giffords' life, won election to a seat on the local Tuscon school board.
So maybe there is hope, after all. Gabby Giffords herself continues to recover. She's showing remarkable progress for someone who suffered that kind of brain injury, and is showing interest in running for reelection to Congress.
There was much to hate about politics this year, especially the amount of hate that seemed to poison it. But if there was an antidote, it came from one of the victims: Gabrielle Giffords, vibrant and valiant member of Congress from Arizona, gunned down when a deranged shooter outside a supermarket put a bullet through her brain. That she survived at all was a miracle; that she recovers — slowly, stubbornly, each day a search for another word, another milestone — is a model. "You have to have hope and faith," she says at the end of Gabby, the book she wrote with her husband and fellow warrior against all odds and expectations, astronaut Mark Kelly. "I will get stronger. I will return."
Just as Americans keep asking what happened last weekend and what we can do to stop the madness, the "mad hatters" of the "tea party" continue to be more preoccupied with gaining some sort of "political advantage" after this.
"Clarabelle Dopenik." That's what one wit on the popular conservative Web site freerepublic.com called Clarence Dupnik, the Pima County, Arizona sheriff who turns 75 this week. Elected continuously since 1980, he is the public face of the investigation into the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 19 others. He is also, according to bloggers on that site, "an incompetent unhinged sonofabitch" and "a jerk" "using this tragedy for baseless, cheap political shots."
Sheriff Dupnik's crime was decrying
"the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.... When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government -- the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous, and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital.... People tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it's not without consequences."
The problem with Sheriff Dupnik's calling out vitriol, blogged one conservative, was that it was actually "calling out Rush, Glen[n], Sean and Fox!!!!!" Dupnik was, wrote another, "inciting violence accusing Rush, tea parties, Palin, and Republicans of bigotry and murder."
What threatened the right the most was losing control of the national political narrative. Until the slayings in the Safeway parking lot, the master story had been the triumphant G.O.P. sweeping into Congress to repeal "the job-killing health care bill." But as of Saturday, the new story connected the dots between the inflammatory rhetoric of McCain/Palin events in 2008, the ugly confrontations at congressional town halls in the summer of 2009, the "lock and load" cackling of the 2010 campaign - and the cultural climate of the Tucson murders. Within the space of a few hours, the story had been transformed from a revenge narrative (Obama brought low) to a soul-searching meta-narrative: How has our society come to this season in hell, and what must be done to heal us?
Former Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle has spoken out against the shootings in Tucson this weekend that included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- who remains in critical condition after being shot in the head -- saying that "expanding the context of the attack to blame and to infringe upon the people's Constitutional liberties is both dangerous and ignorant."
Angle has been repeatedly mentioned by the media in the wake of the shootings, for her comments during the campaign: "People are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, my goodness, what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you, the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."
Politico reports that Angle now says that "the irresponsible assignment of blame to me, Sarah Palin or the TEA Party movement by commentators and elected officials puts all who gather to redress grievances in danger." [...]
She continued: "Finger-pointing towards political figures is an audience-rating game and contradicts the facts as they are known - that the shooter was obsessed with his twisted plans long before the TEA Party movement began."
Angle added that the shooting "is a horrifying and senseless tragedy, and should be condemned as a single act of violence by a single unstable individual" and that she has "consistently called for reasonable political dialogue on policy issues to encourage civil political education and debate."
And Sarah Palin is joining her in doing the same... And making sure we know that SHE is somehow the real victim here.
After nearly a week of silence and waves of bad press, Sarah Palin finally speaks. To Facebook.
Since journalists and pundits are manufacturing "blood libel," the former Alaskan governer must want to speak directly to the people. However, as The Guardian points out, she probably could've picked a better phrase to describe the media's unified attack against her use of violent rhetoric -- most notably putting Giffords in the crosshairs on a campaign poster distributed before the shootings.
"Blood libel" according to Wikipedia:
"Blood libel (also blood accusation) refers to a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, almost always Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays. Historically, these claims have–alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration–been a major theme in European persecution of Jews."
Also, Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish. Oh dear.
Really, Sarah? Really, Sharron? So everything is all hunky dory and coming up rainbows because Palin never actually took out a pistol to duel with Joe Biden during the 2008 Vice Presidential Debate? And it's obvious that Angle has always been about "reasonable political dialogue on policy issues" because she didn't actually take out her "best friends, Smith and Wesson" when she was debating Harry Reid last fall?
[... I]t's difficult to directly link violent political rhetoric like Sarah Palin's illustration showing gun sight cross hairs on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' Arizona district to the shattering of Giffords' office door after her vote for health insurance reform last March or Jared L. Loughner's shooting spree last weekend that left six dead and Giffords and 13 others wounded.
What is clear, however, is that vile and threatening communication that becomes so repetitive that it's routine has the effect of sanctioning an atmosphere of violence.
Conservatives are yammering that they're not the only ones who engage in brutal rhetoric. That's true. But in a contest for production of violent words and images, Republicans would, to use their words, "kill" the Democrats.
The Department of Homeland Security concluded in an April 2009 internal report that right-wing extremism, with a growing potential for violence, was on the rise. That was followed last spring by Capitol security officials reporting a tripling of threats against members of Congress -- almost all from opponents of health care reform -- in other words, from Republicans, right-wingers or people influenced by GOP TV and radio front men who personally profit from the hostile climate they generate.
I remember that report. And I remember the teabaggers whining about how that report was trying to "criminalize politics". So that report was ignored... And this happened...
"Read what Jefferson said about the 'tree of liberty'. It's coming."
"It's time to water the tree of liberty."
This isn't even about health care any more with these radical righties. For them, it's all about racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia... To sum it up in one word, hate. And how sick are the GOP & sick care industry to actually use this thinly veiled hate to rile up these people and encourage them to start violence!
I actually don't mind debating the merits of universal health care with rational conservatives that want to talk about the economics of health care. Where are they? Has today's Republican leadership scared them all out of the party? Are the GOP, the HMOs, and the pharmaceutical companies so afraid of rational discussion of health care that they have to resort to this?
Violence should NOT be condoned, and xenophobia should not be celebrated. If the GOP wants to debate us on health care, then I encourage it. I'm not afraid or making good arguments, and I know many more progressives who feel the same. However, I am afraid of this "teabagger/birther/deather" cult, fully funded by the GOP and the sick care industry, becoming increasingly violent.
I wrote that back in August 2009. And I was already starting to fear what would eventually bear fruit in January 2011. And for Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, and others to blithely ignore the consequences of "politics" turning violent is nothing short of horrifying.
Maybe we need to pay more attention to Gabrielle Giffords herself, and to outgoing Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson (R).
The friendly email Republican Trey Grayson got from Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) last Friday night, congratulating him on a new job, came amid a flood of similar messages. The Kentucky Secretary of State, and erstwhile Senate candidate, recently accepted a position as director of Harvard University's Institute of Politics. It was only the next day that Giffords' message took on a particular significance.
"After you get settled, I would love to talk about what we can do to promote centrism and moderation," Giffords wrote. "I am one of only 12 Dems left in a GOP district (the only woman) and think that we need to figure out how to tone our rhetoric and partisanship down."
On Saturday, Giffords was shot in the head at an event in Tucson, by a gunman who killed six and wounded 13 others. Giffords miraculously survived, but remains in critical condition. As the national conversation turned to what role, if any, violent political rhetoric played in the shooting, Grayson's office released Giffords' email.
"If we could honor Gabby, honor other victims, by having this conversation, and actually doing it, it's a way to honor them," Grayson told TPM in a phone interview.
Grayson, who said he was "really disturbed by how it immediately became political on both sides" after the shooting, said he and Giffords spoke often about the need for more civil discourse. Friday's message was just the latest dispatch in a years-long back and forth of texts and emails.
"We want to have good Republicans and want to have good Democrats," he said, citing the close relationship between the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as an example. "If we would show that a little more publicly, maybe, maybe that would help."
I hope we can learn and we can stop repeating these scary mistakes.
You know, Rachel Maddow has a point. This wasn't really "unimaginable". It's been happening all over the country...
So might the next horrifying American massacre happen here in Nevada? At UNR? Near an Elko mine? At a casino on Las Vegas Boulevard? At a brothel in Pahrump? Perhaps so.
On July 7, 1995, Senate Bill 299 was signed into law, and soon afterward, thousands of Nevada residents took advantage of the law that allowed them to carry a handgun concealed upon them. A steady stream of Nevadans have been obtaining carry of concealed weapon permits ever since. In 1999, Assembly Bill 166 made legal concealed carry possible in more public places.
Registration
Clark County requires registration of handguns only. All other counties have no registration of any guns.
Background Check
All Nevada counties implement the national background check through the Nevada Highway Patrol. By state law, any private party may access Nevada's background check system for the purpose of checking the background of a potential gun purchaser. Currently, the check costs $25.
Open Carry
In Nevada, you may carry a loaded or unloaded firearm on your person without a permit so long as the firearm is fully exposed (known as "open carry"). An example of open carry is when a handgun is carried in an "outside the pants" hip holster. Full or partial concealment (such as a purse, jacket, etc.) is considered concealed carry.
And here's what's been happening.
With more guns sold and registered per capita than anywhere in the U.S., Nevada is a gun state - always has been.
It also is the gun-death state. According to the Center for Disease Control, since 2000, Nevada has led the nation with an average of 26 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people.
War-torn Iraq averaged 32 gun deaths per 100,000 people last year, according to the same study.
At least once a year, an accidental gun death here makes national headlines.
And here's the frightening reality of how incredibly easy it is for some mentally disturbed person or deranged sociopath to obtain lethal firearms in Nevada.
According to the latest scorecard by the National Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Nevada fails miserably when it comes to curbing illegal firearm trafficking, conducting background checks, promoting child safety, banning assault weapons, and keeping guns out of public places.
Nevada received only 11 points out of a possible 100. [...]
While there is no state law requiring a waiting period for first-time handgun buyers, [Gun store owner Bob] Irwin says Clark County has a 3-day restriction.
Yet anyone can buy a handgun or assault weapon on the spot at a Nevada gun show — no questions asked.
“I can’t believe that’s allowed. It’s putting people at risk,” said Maria Outcalt with Domestic Violence Prevention.
It’s that easy access that has Outcalt convinced that stronger gun control laws would help curb violence.
While our gun laws are not nearly as lax as Arizona's, they're certainly "forgiving" enough for someone who otherwise shouldn't be carrying guns to access them.
Yes, yes, I've heard that famous clause: "Guns don't kill. People do." But you know what? When mentally disturbed people can access extremely lethal "weapons of mass distruction" so easily at the neighborhood gun store or local gun show, that's a serious problem.
Nevada's mental health director says this state ranks near the bottom of per person spending on services. And it's just about to get worse with deep budget cuts.
Jared Loughner's mindset and motives before the Tucson shooting are now under scrutiny. Those who know him these past years paint a picture of a mentally disturbed young man, describing his as ranting, destructive and threatening. Fellow students feared he might bring a gun to the school. [...]
[Las Vegas/Clark County] Metro police say there are around 6,000 cases of mental health detainments every year. Those detainments last up to 72 hours and then the state may get involved if there's and issue.
State mental health services face a 14 percent cut and program eliminations this year which is in addition to cuts they have suffered in previous years. UMC's Emergency Chief Dale Carrison spoke to the I-Team last fall about the backlog.
"We've medically cleared them. Now, there's a big line, and if southern Nevada adult mental health for some reason can't turn the patients over, than it builds up."
Nevada's budget cuts this year are likely to include mental health court. It's a program designed to get convicted mental ill people into treatment programs so jail is not their only option.
Back in December, then Governor-elect Brian Sandoval didn't wince as news was leaking of severe budget cuts in the pipeline. And if that wasn't bad enough, The Nevada View reported just last week my new State Senator, Michael Roberson (R-Henderson), hinted at the renewed "tea party" effort to push a "cuts only" budget agenda that would gut the very mental health resources that can possibly prevent another mentally unstable person from taking to violence here in Clark County, as Jared Lee Loughner did in Tucson last week.
Sure, Loughner's homicidal outburst might have been affected by anti-government rhetoric and political diatribes on the Internet or on the airwaves. But we're missing the point if that's all we focus on.
Arizona has implemented dramatic cuts in mental health services in the last few years, as have states across the nation. And if the national healthcare reform bill is repealed, as government-shrinking crusaders are promising, more mental health services will be lost.
Loughner was able to buy a gun — the gun authorities said he used to shoot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others at a supermarket — despite numerous interactions with authorities suggesting he was unstable. If you're surprised, you shouldn't be. Many in this country have worked hard to make it easier to get guns than mental health services, even after the Virginia Tech massacre of 2006, in which 32 people were killed by a young man who was mentally ill.
Now let me pause here to clarify something, because the last thing I want to do is make the stigma surrounding mental illness worse than it is, or to suggest that you ought to pick up the phone and call authorities every time you see someone who acts a little peculiar.
The vast majority of people with mental illness aren't dangerous. But a small minority will become violent, especially those with severe symptoms that go untreated. Ironically, one reason so many don't seek help is because of the stigma, along with the fact that this country has never given mental health treatment the priority it deserves. If you doubt that, just take a look at recent reports on the military's disinclination to diagnose and treat traumatic brain injury in soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.
What the Arizona tragedy ought to spark is not a hysterical conversation about politics, but an honest conversation on the need for earlier diagnosis and better education about mental illness. Since the first signs of delusional behavior often emerge in the late teens and early 20s, teachers and staff at high schools and colleges should be trained to recognize the signs of mental disorders and intervene effectively.
I know from experience that it isn't always easy to convince someone to seek help or to predict the behavior of someone who has severe mental disorders. But although mental illness can't be cured, it can often be treated and managed in a way that relieves suffering for those afflicted, as well as for their families, and helps prevent tragedy.
While California's own mental health resources have been strained due to budget cuts there, they at least have something. Both Arizona and Nevada have next to nothing. Strangely enough, it's far easier here to buy a gun than to get help. This is nothing short of frightening.
As usual, Desert Beacon sheds more light on this pressing issue.
The consequences may be not always be nationally tragic, but for families and individuals trapped by the debilitation of mental diseases the results are always tragic. And not always addressed -- as demonstrated by this commentary from a nurse: "Having spent many years of my life working in a locked psychiatric unit as a nurse, I can attest that the majority of our schizophrenic clients, though sometimes frightening, especially to those not familiar with the illness, were not dangerous. However, clients diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia will sometimes act on their paranoid delusions. I have personally seen how difficult our mental health system can be to navigate. Family members would call me and beg for help, but help is available only under a very special set of circumstances. Sometimes people will seek treatment voluntarily, however, in order to commit a person involuntarily they have to meet certain criteria, either DTS (danger to self), DTO (danger to others) or GD(gravely disabled). The greater problem is that now it is very difficult to obtain any type of outpatient treatment, as insurance generally will not pay for it, or pay only a very small amount. Most people simply cannot afford any more to pay for mental health treatment."
We know that Loughner appears to have some traits associated with mental illness, including confused and distorted thought patterns, implying his receptivity to conspiracy theories, both internally and externally derived. We may infer that he acted on these, which adds another layer to the overall diagnosis. Those who had contact with him at Pima Community College report that he was removed from a math class by a counselor and a police officer, was suspended, and later agreed to withdraw from school in October. [WaPo]
What help he might have sought, or what assistance might have been sought for him, have yet to be revealed publicly. However, it's clear that obtaining mental health services is at least as difficult as the nurse-commenter referenced above. Google "state mental health budget cuts" and you'll get at least 22,200,000 results. Mental health advocates in Texas are worried about the impact of decreased funding, [KHOU] advocates in Mississippi are worried as well, they may be facing cuts of 15%. [LaurelLdr] Mental health budgets have been slashed in Oklahoma. [KRMG] At the top of the list of NAMI's Ten States Hurt by the Mental Health Budget cuts, is Arizona. Nevada stands 7th on that listing. [...]
Before anyone in Nevada is tempted to pass judgment on Arizona's situation in terms of mental and behavioral health services, we should note that in 2006 Nevada received a "D" grade from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the same "D" grade three years later in 2009. In health promotion and measurement terms (evidence based practices, emergency room waiting time, quantity of psychiatric beds) Nevada got an "F." Nevada got a 45% "D" for financing, Medicaid reimbursements to providers to evidence based providers, and more; another "D" for measures such as consumer and family access to essential information from the state, promotion of consumer run programs, and family/peer education and support. There was another "F" for state support of activities requiring collaboration among state mental health agencies and other state agencies and systems. Among the "urgent needs" suggested by the NAMI: (1) restore inpatient staffing levels; (2) increased support for case management, medications, and therapy; and (3) increased resources for supportive housing options.
Interestingly enough, this week's news was supposed to be dominated by upcoming Congressional debate over repealing health care reform... The very same health care reform legislation that included efforts to improve mental health care.
The law signed by President Obama last week expands parity to a much wider pool, making it possible for millions more people to get the same coverage for substance abuse and illnesses like bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia as they would for, say, diabetes or cancer. There are no exact figures, but the mentally ill are more likely to be uninsured than the general population, advocates and researchers say.
“A lot of this still has to play out in terms of how parity works,” said Michael J. Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, an advocacy group. But the new law “can change the mental health system in America and really give families and individuals an opportunity to get a level of access to care we could only fantasize about before this became law,” he said.
Parity means that deductibles, co-payments and limits on the number of visits or days of coverage must be no more restrictive for coverage of mental illnesses and substance abuse than for coverage of medical and surgical treatments. If a plan provides for out-of-network medical benefits, it must provide out-of-network mental health benefits.
Under the new health law, employees of companies with 50 or fewer workers, whose employers were not required to comply with the existing parity law, would receive equal mental health benefits if their employers opt for the state-run exchange plans, available in 2014.
Health care reform also means expanded coverage for mental health care in Medicare and Medicaid programs. Considering what just happened last weekend, perhaps House Republican leaders need to do more than just postpone their planned vote on repealing health care reform. Since repeal is unlikely and the reform legislation now looks more necessary than ever before, perhaps repeal needs to be permanently shelved. Instead, wouldn't it be refreshing to see Congress actually address the pressing issues of today by examining why it's easier to obtain a gun than to access mental health care? And wouldn't it be encouraging to see Governor Sandoval and The Nevada Legislature also address these pressing issues by looking at our own budget and our own problems in taking care of our fellow Nevadans?
In my readings last night, I found myself combing through Dave Neiwert's archives. If you haven't done so already, bookmark him. He's tracked the radical right for years, and he's been warning us for some time of what might happen if we continue to let the extremist hate speech escalate. Last month, he caught Glenn Beck uttering this nonsense...
Nonsense that now feels creepy for some reason. I wonder why.
Now he's predicting IMMINENT VIOLENT REVOLUTION led by those evil progressive radicals who hate the Republic inside the Obama administration. In case he didn't notice, the actual dynamic in Washington these days is actually just a wee bit different, since it's become manifestly clear that President Obama is anything BUT a radical revolutionary. But hey, nothing ever deters the intrepid Beck in the pursuit of his apocalyptic conspiracy theories.
Well, let's be clear: Beck has been warning about this dire imminent threat for quite awhile now. You'll recall he predicted last spring that eeevil progressives were planning a 'summer of rage' filled with violence, death and chaos.
Yeah, that really panned out, eh? Instead we got Byron Williams. Hmmmm.
This theory really is just a warmed-over version of the IMMINENT DIRE THREAT Beck has been shouting at us about since he signed onto Fox. It's become repetitive but more intensified, a manifestation of Beck's steadily creeping paranoia.
After all, he's been theorizing that Obama's band of administration radicals are planning a "global redistribution of the wealth" for a long time -- often flavored with black-helicopter militia theories about a "New World Order". He's been predicting George Soros would try to kill him, and warning that the eeeevil Left is plotting to frame the Tea Partiers for an act of domestic terrorist violence, adding that if right-wing violence does break out, it will have been provoked by Obama and the liberals.
More recently, there have been such similarly credible theories that the European Union Parliament building was intended to resemble the Tower of Babel, and that the evil Holocaust survivor George Soros is plotting to take over the world.
This is yet another reason why I was not all that surprised when my dad called me Saturday morning and told me that a Congresswoman in Arizona, along with dozens more, were shot. Sadly, this was bound to happen.
From a moral viewpoint Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is the victim of demagogues such as Glenn Beck and his allies at Fox News and in the Tea Party Movement. This is not about legal liability but abour moral culpability. This is about a nation that has lost its moral compass.
Some of us progressive writers have been warning about this dangerous trend for several years. This includes my colleagues Fred Clarkson, David Neiwert, Sara Robinson, John Amato, Adele Stan, and others. We blame right-wing demagogues like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter and a culture that tolerates their vicious targeting of scapegoats.
Now the shootings have created a new word floating across cyberspace: "becking." To be "becked" is to be held up as such an evil and destructive person that someone, somewhere, will interpret it as a call to eliminate that problem through violence.
Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik couldn't have been any clearer in explaining how the escalating culture of "violent politics" paved the way for Jared Lee Loughner to commit his heinous crime.
“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” [...]
“We need to do some soul searching … It’s the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business. People tend to pooh-pooh this business about the vitriol that inflames American public opinion by the people who make a living off of that. That may be free speech but it’s not without consequences.”
And while Loughner's exact motives for Saturday's massacre are still unclear, the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has tracked extreme right and hate groups for decades, has unearthed some frightening clues.
At one point, Loughner refers disparagingly to “currency that’s not backed by gold or silver.” The idea that silver and gold are the only “constitutional” money is widespread in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement that produced so much violence in the 1990s. It’s linked to the core Patriot theory that the Federal Reserve is actually a private corporation run for the benefit of unnamed international bankers. So-called Patriots say paper money — what they refer to with a sneer as “Federal Reserve notes” — is not lawful.
At another, Loughner makes extraordinarily obscure comments about language and grammar, suggesting that the government engages in “mind control on the people by controlling grammar.” That’s not the kind of idea that’s very common out there, even on the Internet. In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that Loughner is taking ideas from Patriot conspiracy theorist David Wynn Miller of Milwaukee. Miller claims that the government uses grammar to “enslave” Americans and offers up his truly weird “Truth-language” as an antidote. For example, he says that if you add colons and hyphens to your name in a certain way, you are no longer taxable. Miller may be mad as a hatter, but he has a real following on the right.
Loughner talks about how you “can’t trust the government” and someone burns a U.S. flag in one of his videos. Although certain right-wing websites are already using that (and his listing of The Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books) to claim that Loughner was a “left-winger,” that does not strike me as true. The main enemy of the Patriot movement is certainly the federal government. And so-called Patriots have certainly engaged in acts like burning the flag.
Finally, I think Loughner’s reading list, although it included children’s books and a few classics, had an underlying theme — the individual versus the totalitarian state. Certainly, that’s the explicit central theme of Ayn Rand’s We the Living and Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, among others. I would argue that that’s the way Loughlin seems to be reading The Communist Manifesto and Hitler’s Mein Kampf — as variants of a kind of generalized “smash the state” attitude.
Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, which does similar work to that of Hatewatch, points out in a post earlier today that Loughner also makes a reference to a “second American constitution.” As Chip notes, that is commonly understood to refer to the Reconstruction amendments that freed the slaves and gave them citizenship, among other things. Chip says that “raises the question of a possible racist and anti-immigrant tie” in the Arizona shooting.
OK, so Loughner may have been dabbling in some looney tunes nonsense, possibly even including a known white supremacist hate group. What does this have to do with Glenn Beck... Or Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle for that matter? Well, it comes back to the teabaggers. The "tea party" is a sort of umbrella classification of a number of far right organizations and politicians, but there is definitely strong evidence to show that leading "tea party" figures are trying to legitimize the same extreme ideology of the extreme right that influenced past terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh.
And worse, as Glenn Beck warns of supposed "conspiracies of the left" to bring about "imminent violent revolution", and as Sarah Palin tells her followers, "never retreat, instead RELOAD!", and as Sharron Angle suggests "Second Amendment Remedies" to take care of "enemies in our own system... in the walls of Congress"...
Far too many media pundits and politicians in DC have been far too willing to simply dismiss this as "politics as usual". This is NOT "politics as usual". This is an ever escalating culture of political violence that must stop!
Again, I had feared something like this would eventually happen. Last year, I feared Harry Reid would be the victim. I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the teabaggers' unplugged, unfiltered, and unfettered irrational hatred of Harry Reid... As well as President Barack Obama, for that matter. While "Tea Party, Inc." consultants in California were just focusing on building enough opposition to win an election, the opposition among many teabaggers ran far deeper.
I saw it for myself last March in Searchlight. Thankfully, I observed no violent acts there. But without a doubt, the same overheated rhetoric seen there has also encouraged violence throughout the country in the last two years. And even in the course of the last year, I myself was hearing people saying things as vile as hoping for Harry Reid's death. Some friends of mine were nearly run over by a "tea party"/Sharron Angle fan in a white truck.
But that wasn’t the only violent incident. Before the event began, about 50 Harry Reid supporters lined the sidewalk facing Haulapai with supportive signs. We were getting dozens of honks, thumbs up and waving. A few sour faces drove past, but one bitter Angle supporter in particular took her distaste for Harry Reid too far. She ran her white Toyota truck (NV license plate SCL-006 ) on to the sidewalk, nearly hitting me, a man to my left (who was disabled and had a brace on his right foot) and two women to my right. Several people chased after her and took pictures of her license plate.
Apparently the woman confronted some people in our group after parking her car because she was upset we took pictures of her license plate. I did not see her come near our group because I was consoling the women to my right who were on the verge of tears. People who were across the street were coming over to see if we were okay, and to verify if they saw what they thought they saw: a woman in a white truck (covered in “Angle for Senate”, “Dump Reid” “Don’t Tread on Me” “Nobama” stickers) drive her car onto the sidewalk and try to hit us. She in fact did.
Tire marks on the sidewalk:
Ironically, the driver (who turns out, is a school teacher) was escorted out of the forum by police just minutes before “the fight” broke out for being disruptive.
Sharron Angle has called for an armed revolt against the United Stated government should she lose this election. She has called forHarry Reid to be killed. The leader of the Republican Tea Party, Sarah Palin (who has endorsed Angle and gave the Angle campaign money via Sarah PAC) repeatedly instructs people not to “retreat” but to “reload” when faced with adversity.
The behavior we saw tonight was the result these violent provocations. I have a feeling the worst is yet to come.
Yes, that was the night of the fateful "forum" at Faith Lutheran High School in Summerlin. And yes, this actually happened BEFORE a male Sharron Angle fan started punching a female Harry Reid supporter inside!
Even while I was confident a majority of Nevadans would reject this extremism, I was also afraid of how an enraged, radicalized minority would react.
And again, this has been happening throughout the country. Andrew Sullivan reminded us again yesterday of the violent hate speech that had often been limited to fringe extremists, but has now been popularized by "tea party" icon Sarah Palin.
The point here is not that there is any connection between this random post and political violence. The point is the worldview Palin holds. It is zero-sum. It expresses itself in clear and stark violent imagery. It is constantly about attack, conflict, combat, "enemy territory", "Big Guns", battle. This rhetorical background is so deeply part of the narrative we barely notice it any more. But it is not truly the language of politics; it's the language of war.
Just look again at this ad that ran against Giffords last November. And ponder a moment:
If you are not disturbed by what it proclaims as the essence of true conservatism - a sun-glass-wearing soldier with a machine gun in his open crotch - you should be.
And again, there's a strong possibility that the revolting rants of the "Patriot Movement" fringes of the "tea party", backed up by the radicalized messaging pushed by the likes of Beck and Palin, are encouraging mentally disturbed people like Jared Lee Loughner to resort to violence.
In a series of videos, he gave a rambling account of obsessions and paranoias that appeared to be troubling him with increasing intensity up to the catastrophe. They included references to conscious dreaming, or "conscience dreaming" as he called it, a process of directing one's own dreams that he is thought to have practised. Another was a belief in the gold and silver standard of currency – a favourite topic of the rightwing of American politics that is regularly propounded by the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck.
The tone of Loughner's rantings is almost exclusively conservative and anti-government, with echoes of the populist campaigning of the Tea Party movement. "Don't trust the government listener!" he said in one video, accusing Washington of mind control and brainwashing.
The US constitution, the bible of the Tea Parties, features heavily, as does the suggestion that the federal government is acting against the text. "You don't have to accept the federalist laws. Read the United States of America constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws."
There is also a strong streak of implicit violence in the postings.
He linked to his favourite video, America: Your Last Memory in a Terrorist Country, which shows a ghostly figure burning the US flag in the desert to a heavy metal song that repeatedly chants "Let the bodies hit the floor!"
He referred to people calling him a terrorist and wrote "a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon."
So are all teabaggers terrorists? No, far from it. Are Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Sharron Angle guilty of murder? No, and I would never accuse them of that. But has the tone of the "tea party" become so enraged that it's encouraged violence? There is increasing evidence to show just that. And has the message of the "tea party" turned so hateful that the mentally disturbed take it the wrong way and take images of "take Harry Reid out", "Obamanation", and cross hairs over Gabrielle Giffords' district as a more literal call to arms? I fear so.
Perhaps the notion that this act of violence was the result of a deranged mind will become popular in some circles. If this is the case then there are two problems to address. First, if this individual was, in fact, mentally incompetent to understand the consequences of his actions, when - where - and how did his family and community miss the signals that his mental health was deteriorating? Did they attempt to seek help for him? Where mental health services available? Affordable?
The second issue is, of course, who filled that fragile mind? Was he listening to hate radio broadcasts -- ones with fiery rhetoric replete with visions of doom and gloom for the republic? Was he watching broadcasts or reading inflammatory media which made violence an attractive option? There's a precedent for this. In April 2007 a man was arrested in California for stalking and harassing then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. [WaPo] In April 2010, Charles Alan Wilson, stalked and harassed Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) leaving messages saying "It only takes one piece of lead." His family was disturbed by the effect Glenn Beck's television show had on him. [HP] August 10, 2010, the California Highway Patrol arrested Byron Williams while he was wearing his body armor and threatening to take out the Tides Foundation, because, as his family explained, Beck had "opened his mind." [WaPo] [SFgate]
These weren't the first incidents. In April 2009 three police officers were assassinated in Pittsburgh by Ron Poplawski, who feared, "Obama would take away his gun rights." [NDN] In July 2008, Jim Adkisson of Powell, TN, killed 2 and wounded 7 in his attack on a Knoxville church. Adkisson explained: "He felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets," the affidavit said. "Because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement ... he would then target those that had voted them into office." [CNN] In June 2009, white supremacist and former resident of Butler's Hayden Lake, ID compound walked into the U.S. Holocaust Museum and killed the African American guard who opened the door for him. [CNN] It only took a very few individuals to bring down the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. [wik] There's an older song about all this:
"You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!" [link, credits]
I'm sorry, but I have a hard time moving past this infamous Sharron Angle quote:
Back in June of last year, just as the 2010 general election campaign was kicking off, Rachel Maddow took Angle to task over her casual references of "Second Amendment Remedies".
Some just laughed it off, but this was really a serious problem...
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who represents a district adjacent to Gabrielle Giffords's, said that Saturday's shooting is a consequence of the vitriolic rhetoric that has arisen over the past few years among extreme elements of the Tea Party.
"The climate has gotten so toxic in our political discourse, setting up for this kind of reaction for too long. It's unfortunate to say that. I hate to say that," Grijalva said in an interview with The Huffington Post. "If you're an opponent, you're a deadly enemy," Grijalva said of the mindset among Arizona extremists. "Anybody who contributed to feeding this monster had better step back and realize they're threatening our form of government."
Grijalva said that Tea Party leader Sarah Palin should reflect on the rhetoric that she has employed. "She -- as I mentioned, people contributing to this toxic climate -- Ms. Palin needs to look at her own behavior, and if she wants to help the public discourse, the best thing she could do is to keep quiet."
I mean, this is a situation where -- I mean, people don't -- they really need to realize that the rhetoric and firing people up and, you know, even things, for example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list. But the thing is that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district.
When people do that, they've gotta realize there's consequences to that action.
Maven and Desert Beacon are right. How could we not see this coming? As I said yesterday, our political leaders from across the political spectrum need to dial down the heated rhetoric. And hopefully, we'll never again hear Sharron Angle, Jesse Kelly, Sarah Palin, or anyone else speak so lightly of "Second Amendment Remedies".
