Does a blood-splattered, inflammatory media — especially right-wing media, with its nonstop calls to attack the government, hate liberals, stockpile bullets before Obama comes for your guns — help create a more explosive, Loughner-friendly environment, much like those fundamentalist mullahs who plant the seeds of hate in young Muslim minds?
You know the answer. It’s a bit like asking if violent video games really do desensitize children’s minds, or if smoking too much pot every day will eventually make you a useless, slow-blinking dolt. It might not be the sole cause, but it’s certainly a factor. How big a factor depends, in part, on the level of one’s instability to begin with.
Which leads us straight to Occam’s Razor. The simplest answer is usually most accurate. Loughner was insane…
But the fact is, Loughner’s festering insanity also found easy, fertile ground indeed to flourish into violence. Almost right up until the moment Loughner pulled the trigger, the ever-paranoid, Tea Party-enraged portions of this country essentially cheered him on, sent him a brochure, welcomed him as one of their own.
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When you threaten violence, “by ballot or bullet” rhetoric, and someone acts out these threats, you can’t claim you were only using metaphors and symbols and assume zero responsibility.
You’re the same people who uses metaphors and symbols from the Bible to kill. It’s what you do. You get the weakest to do your dirty work.
1 comment:
Not enough has been said, either, for the appalling ignorance and lack of resources for those with mental health diseases. If they are "covered" at all, it is at huge expense and the stigma remains enormous (look to the military as well for literally scrambling to keep up with the rising rates of depression and mental illness in soldiers).
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