Originally Posted by Willravel

If someone shot Sarah Palin at a political event, I'd be more than willing to entertain the possibility it wasn't just some person who could be dismissed as crazy and be left at that. I'd even be willing to entertain the serious possibility that it was someone on the left who was well aware of what he or she was doing and was in possession of all of his or her faculties. I'd want to know if anyone on the left were calling for violence, passively or otherwise, and if there were a connection. If Al Fraken and Jon Stewart were calling for the unspecific targeting of arch conservatives and one of them ended up dead, serious questions would need to be asked.

The issue is that every time something like this happens, someone flies a plane into an IRS building or someone murders an abortion doctor, the perpetrator is dismissed as just a nut and the wider questions, the scarier questions, are ignored. That serves well the people who might be implicit, but it serves no one else, certainly no one who might be involved in the discussion on a forum. You're welcome to live under a rock, but when you start asking other people to live under a rock, the onus is on you to explain why.

Originally Posted by roachboy

jeez...this is an unfortunate situation, isn't it? good thing that there's nothing problematic involved here like crosshairs on map or slogans like "Don't Retreat--Instead RELOAD" that would normalize rhetorically the idea that political opposition to poujadisme merits being shot. that would certainly but the far right in an unfortunate publicity situation, wouldn't it?


i think it is past time to confront palin and the ultra right on the matter of the rhetoric that they use to frame political matters. it is time for the ultra-right to back off the emphasis on firearms and the normalizing of (fanatasies or--up to now) gun violence as if this was just another language to be used to reach a demographic. it isn't.

and this without making any judgment at all about the person who did the shooting.

no need for there to be such judgments for the palin-y right's rhetorics of violence to be a problem.

Originally Posted by roachboy

dogzilla---come on, pal. the weather underground was only associated with the democratic party in the red-baiting fever dreams of poujadiste nutcases. you wouldn't be one of them, would you?

Originally Posted by The_Dunedan

RB,



You seem to miss the fact that personal responsibility is PERSONAL. Meaning Mr. Loughner's actions are his own fault, they were his own decision, and nobody apart from himself and any active co-conspirators are responsible for them. Mrs. Palin is no more responsible for Loughner's insane acts than J. D. Salinger was responsible for Mark Chapman shooting John Lennon.

Words cannot -make- people do things, just like commercials cannot -make- people buy things. Suggest? Sure. But what someone -does- with that suggestion is 100% On Them. It is not McDonalds' fault when someone makes the decision to eat their junk and then gets fat, it was not Salinger's fault that Lennon was shot, and it is not Mrs. Palin's fault that this screwhead did what he did.

His act. His decision. Nobody else's.

Originally Posted by filtherton

And? My point was that the folks whose political careers thrive because of their abilities to draw false yet politically appealing conclusions are now suddenly taken aback when others draw potentially false yet politically appealing conclusions.

Originally Posted by Slims

Typically rallies, protests, etc. are off-limits for concealed carry. Most people abide by the law.