Poll: Is it really that absurd to blame conservative wailing for the Arizona shooting?

[JoeCool385]

Motes and beams.*

The rank hypocrisy of the OP is staggering. To denounce the tone and language of others while using the same tone and language is absurd.

In particular, I found great humor in the fact that this line:

It would be one thing if they did it all in the spirit of the onion and all their overblown outrage was obviously fake.

immediately followed this one:

They?ve managed to convince a lot of people that every single other news outlet is run by some secret society of liberal Jews.

Or was this indeed some brilliant satire, of which I completely missed the point, and the overblown outrage over the overblown outrage was designed to be tongue-in-cheek?

*"How do you say to your brother: Let me cast the mote out of your eye; and behold a beam is in your own eye? You hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of your own eye, and then shall you see to cast out the mote out of your brother's eye."

 

[Blitzwarp]

Aw, how am I supposed to be a snarky asshat when you're being reasonable?

Aw frack I'm sorry. Erm, erm, I support the Tea Party?!

Yeah, I respect your opinion but like you I really hate when the opposing viewpoint is LOL UR STUPID. I totally understand how that's exactly what you expected to run into on an internet forum.

Yeah. To be honest, I'm surprised at the number of threads dealing with sensitive issues that haven't dissolved into name-calling and a little ashamed at myself now. XD I'm going to go blast some heads on my Xbox >.>

EDIT - I should also probably learn how to format posts durrr.

 

[MortisLegio]

ugh... Cant we do they obvious and blame the guy for his own actions

 

[viranimus]

Well everything Ive came across is that the guy wasnt exactly a supporter of the left any more than he was the right. The guy was indeed a whack job.

However, the reaction basically has little to do with him. Hell the conservatives were denouncing this connection before the connection was really even publicized heavily. Its like they are TRYING to own this and use this for their advantage, to make themselves look victimized in order to offset the garbage that spews from the likes of Beck and Palin.

Fact is... you can look at this guy and know hes nuts and know theres something clearly wrong with him and the ideas in his head that come out verbally or in action are toxic and should be avoided at all costs. Perhaps the same is true of some of these pundits out there that we really need to realize that they are not representative of the real world and little more than spin doctors trying to con people into thinking the way they want them to think. This story is no different.

I say.. perhaps if we stop paying attention to these whacko pundits and politicians and dont give them any sort of creedence, perhaps they will just go away deflated by their irrelevance.

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

ok, this is starting to piss me off. first off, i f***ing DESPISE Sarah Palin. she's such a fearmongering, lowest-denominator-pandering, idiotic, bumpit-sporting hillbilly that every time she opens her mouth i get the urge to kick puppies. BUT! guess who else hates Palin? if you guessed everyone's favorite psychopath-of-the-moment, Jared Loughner, you'd be correct. he did this because he's a fucked-up loony, not because "the Palin Made Him Do It".

mind you, i think the violent rhetoric was a terrible thing, and potentially dangerous, but trying to blame this on the Righties is absurd. it sucks and i hate them, but (for once) this wasn't their fault.

 

[FinalHeart95]

2 answers here:
1) It's as crazy as blaming video games for Columbine.
2) The guy was simply nuts.

Look, I DESPISE Palin, but you can't blame her or other conservatives for this. They did not tell this man to kill anyone, or kill the people themselves. The asshat could've just as easily not done anything.

 

[LittleChone]

Congress needs to get this $#!% together. Seriously.

Also, I had to type "fury Emenlor" in the reCAPTCHA. Seriously.

 

[Berethond]

Only thing to blame is America itself for having such easy Gun laws.

Crazy persons are 1 thing but giving them acces to guns is just insane and stuff like this is bound to happen. (And already has in the past)

No, easy gun laws are not to blame.
Do you have any idea how many existing gun laws he broke as he carried his crime? More laws would not have stopped him.

 

[Super Toast]

The guy is a crazy bastard.

 

[Sovvolf]

I'd say the guy was clearly off of his nut. Blaming it on the right wing conservatives here is like blaming violence on video games. Plenty of killers have killed over video games, however when we read stuff like that we respond with "If the going was guy to go around killing people then, video games or not, he was insane and he'd have probably killed someone with or without the aid of video games". So I don't think we should treat this fellow any different, I don't think it really matter which political side this fellow was on... He was clearly nuts and was a danger to society.

 

[Throwitawaynow]

It may one day get someone to do something like this, but there is NO correlation between anything so far other than mental illness that caused this man to do what he did. Stop pointing fingers, you're not helping.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Motes and beams.*

The rank hypocrisy of the OP is staggering. To denounce the tone and language of others while using the same tone and language is absurd.

In particular, I found great humor in the fact that this line:

It would be one thing if they did it all in the spirit of the onion and all their overblown outrage was obviously fake.

immediately followed this one:

They?ve managed to convince a lot of people that every single other news outlet is run by some secret society of liberal Jews.

Or was this indeed some brilliant satire, of which I completely missed the point, and the overblown outrage over the overblown outrage was designed to be tongue-in-cheek?

*"How do you say to your brother: Let me cast the mote out of your eye; and behold a beam is in your own eye? You hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of your own eye, and then shall you see to cast out the mote out of your brother's eye."

No, I think you got the point.
Of course I threw in a little overblown outrage and even baseless & broad assumptions/BS about the psycho into the post. But as you noticed, it does illustrate my point. That is how most people perceive Fox News (and most right wing politicians) because it usually is filled with venom and complete BS that they try to pass off as real threats to people?s liberties and freedoms.
As some have pointed out, we don?t even know what really caused this guy to finally snap and fly off the handle like that; it could?ve been the neighbor?s dog talking to him ? if that?s the case, it?s time we ban dogs, they?ve been setting off our psychos for too long... I?m overdoing it again by the way.
However what I do find very telling are the reactions. Not just the reactions here which are good enough. Immediately, Fox News and Conservative politicians get on the defensive: I noticed this before I noticed anyone accusing them of anything. That betrayed a guilty conscience that I can?t help but examine.
The fact of the matter is that when some nutty white guy goes on a rampage, or someone stomps on a protester?s head at a rally, or brings an automatic rifle to a ?town hall? discussion people now automatically assume he is some militant right winger. As Jambox pointed out this time ?(for once)? it?s not be their fault. The right wing does have this reputation and I do personally feel that at this point they earned it even if it has nothing to do with this particular psycho.
I?m not saying that the conservatives don?t have anything good to offer either (I myself appreciate some of the things that they stand for... On paper at least), I?m just saying that any virtues of the right wing (especially in the past 20-30 years) are overshadowed (or sometimes just plain abandoned) in the interest of elitism and bigotry. And that shouldn?t be the case, especially if they want to be ?the grownups.? I used to look to the right to be the logical and calculating branch that doesn?t overextend what our government should be. Now they seem like the emotional messes that they try and make the left wing sound like.

 

[VaderMan92]

anyone blaming conservatives for this is nuts. this guy was a loon who somehow sneaked his way through several psych evaluations and had parents who didn't seek treatment for their loony toon son. This event, if you need to compulsively blame anyone for it, is the fault of his parents and the shrink that decided not to put him on meds. Also we need better screening of messed up kids in the k-12 school system if we caught the crazies early then we can either get them treatment or lock them in a deep dark hole somewhere. All this panzy ass "he's just a little different" crap ain't gonna fly.

 

[VaderMan92]

Also everyone remember that left wing wackjob that held up discovery channel headquarters with a gun and a bomb. I don't remember the right immediately jumping on the left for that little fiasco. All the left is doing in this case is to try and hurt the right because their administration is losing political capital and they lost the house. They realize that they are losing their hold on America so they are grabbing at any little thing they can use to get more support or take it away from the right.

 

[AssButt]

Funny how now people on the left are accusing the fear mongering right of causing the shooting, way to spread the fear more, eh?

Even if it could be proved that the right caused it, so what? If he didn't "buy into right wing propaganda" he might have found another issue to become obsessed and murder people over.

Crazed killers kill people because they're crazy, not because they believe in a certain political ideology.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Also everyone remember that left wing wackjob that held up discovery channel headquarters with a gun and a bomb. I don't remember the right immediately jumping on the left for that little fiasco. All the left is doing in this case is to try and hurt the right because their administration is losing political capital and they lost the house. They realize that they are losing their hold on America so they are grabbing at any little thing they can use to get more support or take it away from the right.

I don't remember that scene but Fox News probably did try pinning it on the left. That's what they're trying to do with this. The only thing that would deter them is probably being called out on "calling the kettle black."
I don't even see the left leaning pundits and politicians pinning this on the right; they're actually being quite reasonable about it. They should be capitalizing on it like as you said, they're losing their grip and they never take opportunities like this. You have to admit the left is pretty useless even when it comes to themselves: they never burn the other side when the opportunity arises while the other side goes so far as to make up things to burn them over. The only public person I've seen pointing fingers at people like Palin is Bill Mahr and he's not left or right, he makes fun of everybody.
But as useless as the liberals are, at least they don't make up threats to people's lives and liberty (BS like death panels) in order to scare their constituents into line. I think the right wing scares their constituents too much and gets them paranoid about all sorts of imagined threats to the point where they feel the need to carry an assault rifle to a town hall meeting. How can that NOT end badly?

But then again, HL Mencken said that was the main point of politics.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

 

[Heinrich843]

Wait what?

If you have to ask if outside factors into this guy's life like Sarah Palin had anything to do with the shooting you need to look up the giant warning flags this guy was throwing up.

Generally, when your teachers say things like "Obviously disturbed", and call the cops to remove you from a college campus several times.. and you actually need to seek medical help to return to school.. which requires a letter of certification that you are okay... something is wrong!

The fault here lies with the community and the parents not getting this guy help.

Also, what's up with people just listening to what a news station has to say about political motivations (in speculation) about a guy who lists his favorite books as "the communist manifesto, mein kampf, animal farm, and peter pan"?

There's definitely some cases in which individuals are attempted to be discredited because of their crimes as "insane". This isn't one of them.

Also, in response to the earlier debate about "LOL GUNS". -

In America you actually have to fill out forms that require you to be a cohesive individual. Next, the FFL (Federal Firearms Licensed dealer) runs a background check which is now instant and denies you a gun if you've had mental spots on your record, ever been a felon for any reason, and ever had a misdemeanor of domestic violence on your records. That's all permanent.

This guy was never given help other than being offered private counseling for a college he was attending. He hadn't committed any violent crimes or felonies prior to this.

For all intensive purposes, he was a law abiding citizen until he broke the federal gun laws by crossing into the "no gun" zone.

It's real easy to blame the gun for the situation which unfolded, but you've got to remember the gun doesn't walk on it's own. The guy was right next to the representative. He could have stabbed her.

Taking away guns doesn't solve issues with crime or violence because there will still be people who want to steal from you and beat you to death with a pipe regardless of gun laws.

Plus, you can't suppress technology once it's out in circulation. (People make guns.)

 

[jamesworkshop]

God damm American's are crazy, no of course people being killed is not the fault of the person pulling the trigger, but talking heads on TV and/or rock records.