Home › Forums › Open Discussion › AZ Giffords shot, how do we cool the rhetoric?
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January 10, 2011 at 8:37 pm #713475
clark5080ParticipantTheese are not my words but sum up my feelings
Quoted from a radio host named Alan Hunt
“It is not about politics. Loughner had been isolated from any friends, thrown out of community college, rejected by the Army, and stalking Rep. Giffords for several years – well before immigration debates or health care were even on the scene. Insane people are just that: insane. So were the assassins of John Lennon, Pres. Garfield and the attempted ones of Reagan, Ford, etc..”
January 10, 2011 at 10:23 pm #713476
JoBParticipantClark5080..
If you look at the “unbalanced lone gunman ” closely you will find that they all pretty much have one thing in common…
The rhetoric of hate.
January 10, 2011 at 10:53 pm #713477
bebecatMemberJanuary 10, 2011 at 11:53 pm #713478
jamminjMemberIf you believe that hitler was taking over your country, that there were going to be death panels, that our president isn’t even a citizen, that YOUR country was being taken away by socialists???? why would you NOT think an ‘unbalanced lone gunman’ wasn’t going to take the 2nd amendment into his own hands?
Tone down the rhetoric!!!, sorry but that was already chimed over and over and over, after ever increasing violence towards govt officials, now you are berating those that have been saying it for years.
crazy nuts on both sides, but some give credence to their dementia and paranoia.
Many have said that this will eventually happen, why act surprised.
January 11, 2011 at 12:08 am #713479
dobroParticipantHere is a good commentary on this issue that I think all sides might find interesting…
January 11, 2011 at 1:44 am #713480
jamminjMember“lone gunman” – think not.
And forwarned 2 years ago by DHS
http://wnd.com/images/dhs-rightwing-extremism.pdf
one thing all in common: anti-government fueled by anti-govt speech.
January 11, 2011 at 1:52 am #713481
JoBParticipantAndy
“We might as well cock the gun and hold it to our own heads”
is an apt description of exactly what happened in Tuscon.
A young man walked up to Congressman Gifford, cocked a gun, held it to her head and fired.
You may want to write the conversation about how and why this is happening off as petty partisanship …
but speaking strictly for myself i can assure you that this is not more of the same old same old partisan crap for me.
This is one tired old woman trying to explain to you that this behavior is dangerous…
The conversation about hate rhetoric is not a new one for me. I have been having this identical conversation with the more radical elements of our society since the early 70s…
starting with the Students for a Democratic Society..
which was definately not a conservative republican organization.
over the last 4+ decades numerous organizations have fostered the kind of talk that results in gunfire…
and in the unbalanced lone gunman who has become part of our national lore
that kind of talk didn’t really cross over into the mainstream media and onto national political podiums until the last decade.
it didn’t become fashionable until it was somehow sanitized by our very own gun toting hate mongering republican female pundits and candidates.
Well.. this is a very dangerous fashion.
And it’s not going to stop unless more than a few people who call themselves conservatives stand up for civility.
These people are salesman
the day you stop buying
they will stop selling
it really is that simple.
January 11, 2011 at 2:14 am #713482
charlabobParticipantThere is no equivalence here. In the ’70’s, no “political party” supported the alleged violence on the left. The dems and libs and greens tripped over each other to disavow anything radical. That is no longer the case. I’m disappointed that so many folks on the left seem to be falling, once again, for the false equivalance scam. When, as they say, will we ever learn?
January 11, 2011 at 2:26 am #713483
SmittyParticipantSome famous Conservatives below:
Even before Bush was elected president, the kill-Bush talk and imagery started. When Governor Bush was delivering his 2000 convention speech, Craig Kilborn, a CBS talk-show host, showed him on the screen with the words “SNIPERS WANTED.” Six years later, Bill Maher, the comedian-pundit, was having a conversation with John Kerry. He asked the senator what he had gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry answered that he had taken her to Vermont. Maher said, “You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.” (New Hampshire is an early primary state, of course.) Kerry said, “Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.” (This is the same Kerry who joked in 1988, “Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they’re to shoot Quayle.”) Also in 2006, the New York comptroller, Alan Hevesi, spoke to graduating students at Queens College. He said that his fellow Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer, would “put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.”
January 11, 2011 at 2:52 am #713484
jamminjMemberUnbelievable, you are comparing this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJP9xB5Eoa0
“If ballots don’t work, bullets will”
to
bad jokes made on a comedy show??
This is the kind of disconnect I think that worried the DHS and others when the 2nd amendment was spoken, armed guns brought to rallies, talk of secession, etc…you want to compare it to a comedy show. wow.
I guess all those other shootings, rocks thrown, anti-govt hate was supposed to be jokes as well.
January 11, 2011 at 3:06 am #713485
jamminjMemberhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/18/gun-protests-obama
was this supposed to be a joke as well??
“It is time to water the tree of liberty”
January 11, 2011 at 3:14 am #713486
SmittyParticipantYes, Kerry is a comedian. Good call.
If you really want me to post stuff from KoS, Moveon, and democrat political ads showing a Republican congressman in cross-hairs I will(there are links to democrat maps with cross-hairs over republican opposition as well above!).
This was more for Job who blatently called out conservatives in her last post.
This guy is a registered Independent and all you guys can talk about is the guaranteed influence he had from the right. You don’t even know if he ever watched Beck, looked at Palins web-site (2 years after he started stalking the congresswoman) or watched Hannity. You do not know!
Stop it!
Maybe November still hurts too much?
January 11, 2011 at 3:20 am #713487
JanSParticipantoh, smitty…get off this kick where you have to prove that the other side is worse. What good does it do? It simply inflames more, divides more. Take it elsewhere..we’re trying to cool the rhetoric, not add to it. Both sides are wrong when they do it…both sides. No need to keep looking stuff up to prove your point. Geez!
If parties didn’t exist, what would you be doing? Left, right, independent…all wrong when they do it. And we accept it and let them do it. Well, time to start objecting. Do you object? Or is it OK with you?
January 11, 2011 at 3:24 am #713488
JanSParticipantand…..it’s the total atmosphere that poisons crazies like this guy. Maybe he wasn’t political at all…but he did single out the Congresswoman. It doesn’t matter where the influence came from…it is out there…it permeates our society these days…and many of us are simply tired of it.
January 11, 2011 at 3:34 am #713489
JoBParticipantsmitty…
if you spent a week in arizona listening to the hate rhetoric passed off as dinner conversation you wouldn’t be so quick to pass this all off as partisan bickering.
After doing so… I had no difficulty at all identifying the Pima country sheriff’s concerns.
There is a huge difference between hate rhetoric and political posturing.
What is really sad is that too many people have heard so much of one passed off as the other
that they have lost the ability to tell the difference.
January 11, 2011 at 4:11 am #713490
SmittyParticipantJan, I am not saying one side is better or worse. I am saying people should stop associating this nut job with the right. They have been doing it since shortly after the incident with absolutely zero proof.
January 11, 2011 at 5:40 am #713491
clark5080Participantan interesting read here
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/01/jared_loughner_alleged_shooter.php
January 11, 2011 at 9:28 am #713492
HMC RichParticipantCait, well said.
JanS. I get your point but Dobro put out a challenge. I just answered. But, as a conservative I will not stand around and listen to people blame others when all the facts are not in. In fact Smitty has been saying all along, let’s not jump to conclusions.
If it is due to vitriol from right and left sources, then we certainly need to tone it down. I can’t stand Bill Maher’s politics but in no way do I want him to be muzzled. Nor do I want Rush muzzled. Liberty starts with Freedom of Speech. Normal discourse which can be highly opinionated but never meant to cause violence like this.
This was a senseless tragedy. But everytime some nut goes crazy the people who dislike the right try to make some connection. It’s OK for you to not like the right but use facts and not conjecture.
We do not convict people just on heresay (usually). (Thank God for DNA testing. People wrongly jailed are getting released). Anyway, there needs to be evidence to back up a hypothesis.
A center right (or right wing) view of the left vs right spat (if you are interested. If not skip it) http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/there-are-no-politics-in-murder/#more-2413
Clark5080’s post is interesting. The article shows some insight to when the young man started to melt away from society. The hope of a former friend that it was not him. More investigation is needed.
What I hope is that the victims and survivors are treated well and the heroes of this will be recognized. This violence is just so wrong. I want to cry. That could have been one of us or a family member.
January 11, 2011 at 5:31 pm #713493
JoBParticipantClark5080…
a climate of violence is no respecter of political affiliation.
hate rhetoric is difficult enough to handle when you are emotionally stable…
i found myself incensed by the dinner table conversations I experienced in Arizona
it is impossible when you aren’t.
hopefully…
this is a start..
from the head of FOX broadcasting
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/10/fox-news-ceo-roger-ailes-_n_806952.html
January 11, 2011 at 6:25 pm #713494
dawsonctParticipantSorry Cait Re: post 74. That dog don’t hunt.
—
And, by that, I don’t mean your post is literally a hunting dog that is too lazy to do it’s job.
January 11, 2011 at 6:41 pm #713495
dawsonctParticipantBefore those who are predisposed to their 2nd amendment solutions to everything, the gun lobbyists are starting to come out with their usual TP whenever there is a mass shooting: if only everyone had been armed, they would have been able to shoot the shooter before he really got going.
Aside from the stupidity of putting more bullets in the air, if four, six, ten people are popping off rounds, who knows who to shoot at?
—
I’ve heard reports today, that after the gunman was subdued, one of the bystanders picked up his gun to move it away and was told by one of the people holding the gunman down to drop the gun before someone thought that THEY were shooting it.
A timely warning apparently, as an armed civilian was running from one of the nearby stores, gun drawn, safety off, and ready to shoot.
January 11, 2011 at 10:58 pm #713496
CaitParticipantDawsonct… sorry, I don’t get what you meant by that.
January 12, 2011 at 3:43 am #713497
dobroParticipantProblems that come up when discussing issues like this…
Folks who flat out lie to your face like the Palin spokesmodel I mentioned earlier who told us the cross hairs were surveyors marks.
Lies and misinformation like the pic Smitty posted with the bullseye-a photoshop fake- details here
http://mediamatters.org/research/201101110003?newsref=www.eschatonblog.com
BTW, I’m not saying Smitty knew it was fake-he just bought into disinformation thrown out there by the rightwingers to muddy the waters and keep their false equivalence/victim thing going.
It would be very helpful if people holding public office who say cr*p like “I want you to be armed and dangerous…” Michelle Bachmann- to their constituants were to be held responsible for such inflammatory rhetoric. But you can’t get to that point if we have to turn it all into “everybody does it.”
Fact is, everybody doesn’t do it and those that do should be held responsible for it and shunned.
January 12, 2011 at 4:22 am #713498
dobroParticipantHere’s a relevant quote from George Packer in THe New Yorker…
…Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous…
The rest of the article is here…
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2011/01/tucson-revisited.html
January 12, 2011 at 4:34 am #713499
redblackParticipanti’ve been holding my tongue on this, smitty and rich. since the moment this tragedy hit the airwaves saturday, it appears you and your handlers were all ready to get defensive because you knew exactly what the shooter was thinking when he pulled the trigger. i have to ask you: what sand hill has your head been buried in if you don’t understand what the libs in this forum are yelling about?
starting with pelosi’s ascendancy to speaker of the house in 2006, the right has been ginning up gun violence. you didn’t see the signs at the anti-health-insurance-reform rallies? have you read the comments on red state lately? even the tacoma news-tribune comments section has its share of anti-socialist loud-mouthed NRA morons. or are you patently ignoring them?
i don’t want to hear about lynette fromme or john hinckley. let’s talk about the flyers that were passed out in dallas before kennedy was assassinated in ’63. same rhetoric. sarah palin and glenn beck and rush limbaugh and gordon liddy and that freakin’ idiot bernie goldberg have been inciting violence among the trailer park gun nuts for years now and have been convincing them that the red commies have infiltrated the u.s. government.
you know exactly what i’m talking about, so quit being obtuse. or pretending to be. you’re either being disingenuous or stupid. which is it?
look: the best thing you guys could do for yourselves and your country right now is quit parroting matt drudge and denounce this mentally-ill freak as the terrorist that he is. set a precedent for dealing with future NRA gun nuts and let the world know that you’re serious about not taking up arms against those you disagree with. or your own government.
i took that pledge a long time ago – like when i was in civics class in high school. i hated reagan, both bushes, and a whole slew of republican idiots since then who have handed this country to the chinese and run it into financial ruin; but i would never have condoned violence against elected officials. nor would i have adopted a “wait and see attitude” (until we get our spin together) toward the terrorists who picked up arms against them.
you’re asking me to “stop it?”
you first.
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